Thank you.
What I was going to say is that, if a normal business venture put profit at the centre of their business, a social enterprise puts people and the planet at the centre or the core of their business model. You can think of a social entrepreneur as a gentleman like Fabrice Vil from Quebec, who started Pour 3 Points. He says that someone who borrows pragmatic notions from entrepreneurship in order to maximize its beneficial contributions to society is no charity. He says that it contributes to creating positive change in society.
There are over 30,000 social enterprises that were documented across Canada from 2016 and 2017, with over 60% of those that purposely provide employment to marginalized, disadvantaged or vulnerable groups. These are equity-seeking groups. Social enterprises are essentially on-ramps for social and economic inclusion of our most vulnerable segments of the population. This is, I think, very important for this committee to realize, because I think it highlights how the social economy in Canada, and specifically in Quebec, I would say, which serves as an exemplar for all of the country, can really help us in the COVID economic recovery.
The social economy has been 40 years in the making in Canada. The Canadian Community Economic Development Network has been around for that long, and many of us are probably aware of many social enterprises like agriculture co-operatives that started mostly in rural Canada. Credit unions are social enterprises. The Salvation Army thrift stores are social enterprises. Whether you're a button factory in Dartmouth, a public market like Jean-Talon in Montreal, a furniture reuse facility in Toronto like Furniture Bank, an indigenous-owned and operated geothermal energy installation company in Winnipeg or a café and catering business in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, these are all businesses that have a social and often environmental mission at the heart of their raison d'être.
I have just a few quick stats, and then I'll move to wrap up.
Ms. Dancho, I'm sorry if I'm being too long or long-winded.
In Ontario alone, based on 2016 statistics, there are over 10,000 social enterprises in operation, and 68% of those had a poverty reduction focus. In Manitoba, there were at least 500 social enterprises in 2016 employing 17,800 people, and Manitoba has its own social enterprise centre called Social Enterprise Manitoba on Main Street in Winnipeg.
The centre is a long-standing partner within the Canadian Community Economic Development Network, which has operated for over 30 years to develop a people-centred economy and social economy within Manitoba. The centre in Winnipeg is a collaborative workspace that houses many social enterprises like Build Inc., AKI Energy, Purpose Construction, Local Investment Toward Employment, the Social Purchasing Portal, Vincent Design Inc., YouthBuild and others.
I want to speak specifically to Quebec and the importance that Quebec has. I have the statistics for all of Canada, but I want to make an appeal to my colleague Ms. Chabot as to why I think that this study is really important, because Quebec, I would submit to you, is probably the leader in this country in terms of the social economy.
There are 11,200 social enterprises employing 220,000 people with sales revenue exceeding $47.8 billion in Quebec alone. Quebec's social economy has been invested in, and the Quebec government has done a great job, as well as the Government of Canada, in setting up what we call social finance infrastructure within that province to help these social enterprises grow, scale and become investment-ready and take on private investment. I have a couple of examples here.
La Fiducie du Chantier de l’économie sociale, which is the fund or the foundation in Quebec, was started with an investment from the Government of Canada of $23.8 million and then leveraged with an additional investment by two labour solidarity funds and the Government of Quebec. In total, just think about the way a government investment can be leveraged with private investment to attract that private investment and then basically help grow social enterprises. There are over 190 of them that have been helped through this particular fund, with almost $439 million in economic activity created and 3,497 jobs.
There's an even older fund in Quebec called RISQ for short—the Réseau d'investissement social du Québec. It has been around since 1997. Over the 22 years that the fund has been around, it has invested in 926 projects and created over 11,000 jobs. Again, with a very small investment this has leveraged private investment to help grow a social economy in Quebec, which I think serves as an example for the rest of the country.
I'll start to wrap up now. These are the reasons that I think this matters. Social enterprises are market-based solutions with a support system and some unique financing tools and mechanisms. These unique types of businesses can grow and become completely viable. Remember as they grow they create more social impact and they create more equity and inclusion. They also address a lot of the issues and challenges that we have, which this committee looks at and, in a way, ESDC is responsible for. I think this committee is the perfect committee to be doing this work.
One thing, I think, that is important to keep in mind is that many are owned and operated by non-profit and charitable organizations across Canada. Imagine Canada has been tracking statistics on the charitable organizations across the country. For many years now it has said that earned revenue, which is what we're talking about, basically charities involved in commercial activity.... It has said that these enterprises that charities run are done for a social mission, but they contribute revenue back to help support their charitable mission as an organization. In a time when those organizations have been left vulnerable by this pandemic and not had the ability to fundraise, I think social enterprise represents an opportunity for them to stabilize and generate revenue back to source in the absence of some of their other revenue streams.
The other thing I need to say is that social enterprises, again, are market-based solutions. What this means is that they do not require public expenditure forever or in perpetuity. They only require an investment for a short period of time, perhaps five years of government support, to really grow in scale.
I'll start to wrap up. What I've seen is that social enterprises can address food insecurity and the energy transition that we want to make. They can be engaged in early learning and child care, and that's a really important initiative that our government has identified. They often operate in waste reduction management and the reuse of many products at the end of their life cycles. They're also very engaged in that. There's seniors' care and reconciliation.
There's quite a great organization called Raven Indigenous Capital Partners, which has developed a unique social finance tool called “community-driven outcomes contracts”. They're an indigenous-run company that is contracting to ACI Energy to essentially have first nation and indigenous communities finance their own projects in their communities and have indigenous-owned and operated businesses or social enterprises do geothermal installations in northern and remote communities.
To me, this is a model we can use to solve many of these problems that we have, and I think our government has recognized that as a priority.
I will leave it there. I think I've made my case.
I hope the members of the committee will support this motion and undertake a study. I think it's really relevant to what we've experienced during COVID-19 and how we are looking at bringing our economy back in a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable way.
Thank you.
