Okay, what would the added value of social finance be? I guess I should say that the reason we inaugurated our study wasn't necessarily to look into social finance per se. We actually were looking into the struggles that not-for-profits were already facing in Alberta, and social finance is just part of the picture. In some ways there are aspects of social finance that aren't that new, in the sense that there's a long tradition of trying to find alternative ways of funding social programs, especially in a place like Alberta.
We went through in detail all the way from 1966 when the Preventive Social Services Act was passed by the Social Credit government up to 2014 essentially. We looked at that period of time and at the relationship between the Government of Alberta and the not-for-profits in Alberta. What we found is an absolutely fascinating story in which Alberta passed the PSS Act in conjunction with other programs like medicare during this period. It was really a growth period of building up the social safety net in Canada writ large and also the Canada assistance plan during this time.
What we see through time in Alberta is a real push under the Klein government from 1993 forward, especially at the turn of the 2000s and on, to privatize social service delivery in any way they can. Ralph Klein set his sights and that of his government on ways to control expenditures as much as possible; and one of those ways, in terms of a real tangible example, is children's services. They tried to take the aspects of children's services, maybe not in terms of child intervention, but in terms of these preventive programs that helped to keep families intact and keep families together. They tried to see if they could download that responsibility onto other organizations than the government.
Based on our work, I see the precursors to this push towards social finance in these kinds of pioneering efforts towards privatization in Alberta.
Just to finish quickly, the initial impetus of the Social Credit in the sixties, seventies, and eighties wasn't necessarily towards privatization: we certainly did not find that. We actually see a really interesting policy—and I would encourage you to look into it—based around preventing social problems as they come about in small communities across the land.