Human Resources Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2022

[The Chair (Mr. Robert Morrissey (Egmont, Lib.)), Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Committee members, we have a quorum. I call the meeting to order.

As you'll notice, our clerk is ill today, so we have a temporary clerk. I will ask her to introduce herself.

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Vanessa Davies]

I'm Vanessa Davies. It's nice to see you all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Welcome, Ms. Davies.

Welcome to meeting number 35 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. Today's meeting is again taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. Therefore, members are attending in person and remotely, using the Zoom application.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of witnesses and members.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. For those participating virtually, please use the “raise hand” function. Before speaking, click on the microphone icon to activate your own mike. When you have finished speaking, please put your mike on mute to minimize interference.

For those in the room, if you wish to speak, please get my attention by raising your hand. The microphone will be controlled by the proceedings and verification officer. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order with those who raise their hand when they go through.

You may speak in the official language of your choice. I would ask you to get my attention if translation services fail. We'll suspend while they're corrected. I would also ask members and witnesses to speak slowly for the benefit of the translators, so that they can provide an adequate interpretation. Should any technical challenges arise, please advise me and we will suspend for a few minutes.

I will remind those attending in person and virtually that screenshots of the committee's proceedings are not allowed.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Thursday, February 3, 2022, the committee will resume its study of supporting Black Canadian communities initiatives.

I would like to welcome our witnesses for the first hour. We'll begin our discussion with five minutes of opening remarks, followed by questions. We have the Network for the Advancement of Black Communities and amanuel melles; Groupe 3737 and Louis-Edgar Jean-François, chief executive officer; and the Black Business Initiative and Rustum Southwell, chief executive officer.

We will begin with Mr. melles for five minutes.

I will advise the witnesses, as well as members, that when your time is getting short, I will simply say, “10 seconds”, and I will ask you to conclude your remarks.

Mr. melles, you have the floor.

[amanuel melles, Executive Director, Network for the Advancement of Black Communities]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm pleased to join this meeting with the committee. I'm joining you from Toronto, Treaty No. 13.

I'm so pleased to be able to share some of my thoughts about the supporting Black Canadian communities initiative.

The Network for the Advancement of Black Communities is a national organization. It's a systems-change focused organization, which does a lot of convening, knowledge mobilization, capacity building, research and policy. In Ontario, we also do granting. So far, we have granted more than $6 million in terms of capacity building for Black organizations, working closely with the Ontario government.

For this particular initiative, the supporting Black Canadian communities initiative, we have been retained by the department, ESDC, as the expert service provider. We have worked very closely with Black intermediaries, of whom two executive directors, Rustum and Louis-Edgar, are in this session with me.

The supporting Black Canadian communities initiative has been a transformational new initiative for Black communities in this country. It is unprecedented, in the fact that it came out of a codesign process between Black leaders. There are 33 of them, and three of us are here. We met in Gatineau in the summer of 2019 and worked with the federal government to lay the foundation for what this initiative is all about.

As you know, within it there is a capacity-building component, an institute that is going to be launched, and there was capital funding. It's a significant investment in Black communities, which we have never seen federally, at least not in my time in this sector, which comes close to 30 years.

What's unique about the supporting Black Canadian communities initiative is that it puts Black community leaders in the driver's seat, so to speak. For the first time, we have Black intermediaries who are funded to regrant dollars to Black community organizations. What's also important to note is that this happened in the context of the pandemic. We have seen a lot of grassroots organizations across the country that are close to the programs working with Black communities to address the challenge of the pandemic being able to access resources to do the things that matter to them.

One of the great things about this initiative is that it allowed of lot of its recipients to use it as a platform to access other resources. The federal government last year launched the $350-million emergency community support fund. Now, there is a big community recovery fund also. In regard to this funding that the groups have received, many of them ended up receiving additional funding from philanthropic foundations, United Way or local governments, so it has that ripple effect of enabling.

The supporting Black Canadian communities initiative is also an opportunity for us to talk about shifting the relationship between Black communities and the federal government from one of transaction to one of transformation.

I'll be happy to talk later on in the course of the Q and A about some of the things that we could do. However, a few of the things that are important to pay attention to are how we build on the codesign process that we had between Black communities and government and how we start embedding Afro-centric values into the measurement and evaluation.

One thing you heard from others who have come before you is the need to look at sustainable funding. I've always said—as I have been dealing with this space around design, funding and capacity building—that you cannot capacity build your way out of systemic challenges for Black communities. Capacity building is a good enabler, but at the end of the day, the federal government needs to consider how to sustain these changes by thinking about core and sustained funding for organizations. You have heard some of that from previous speakers—that whole area of how we work together to build on that, again, through a codesign process.

In terms of this challenge of over-reporting, maybe here is an opportunity to move from contributions to grants. The Ontario Black youth action plan works closely with the Ontario government to deploy a different system of funding that allows organizational leaders to step back, do innovation, plan more and sustain some of the work that they're doing.

The landscape has shifted. There's an opportunity through the multiple funding streams you have—the entrepreneurship fund, the supporting Black Canadian communities initiative and the announcement that was made today for the endowment fund—for us to regroup as Black leaders with the government and really reflect on how we can tweak this whole system.

Thank you for your time. I'll be happy to engage in the Q and A later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. melles.

We go now to Groupe 3737 and Monsieur Jean-François for five minutes.

[Louis-Edgar Jean-François, Chief Executive Officer, Groupe 3737]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

It is a pleasure to be able to exchange with the members of the committee, whom I thank for this initiative and for this information gathering.

Groupe 3737 is an entrepreneurial coaching ecosystem with a focus on business and organizational development. We do this through nine programs that support entrepreneurs and organizations at all stages, whether they are at the ideation, acceleration or growth stage. We support young and old alike with a focus on ethnocultural diversity, specifically Black communities.

We are privileged to work with amanuel melles' and Rustum Southwell's teams, as well as Sharif Haji's Africa Centre in the west and Raymund Guiste's Tropicana Community Services in Ontario.

We work in a very synergistic way and we have an ecosystem approach.

We are privileged to manage the supporting Black Canadian communities initiative for the province of Quebec, a very successful initiative so far. In a very concrete way, together with the other intermediaries, we have been able to build capacity around the three priorities of improving governance, increasing human resources and diversifying revenues.

Today, I want to talk to you about statistics so that you can see the impact that this initiative has had, not only on Black communities, but also on the non-profit organizations that support those communities.

As you know, this initiative, supported by the federal government, was created in recognition of the United Nations' International Decade for People of African Descent. Groupe 3737 is privileged to be one of the four Canadian organizations responsible for the pan-Canadian implementation of this initiative and for providing constructive leadership.

I spoke about the three priorities of improving governance, increasing and diversifying funding sources, and improving operational and organizational management. This has enabled us to enter a digital transformation mode. As you know, in 2022, we cannot miss out on all things digital if we want to make our processes and support more efficient.

The number of non-profit organizations, or NPOs, that we support has grown from 58 at the outset to 206 today. In partnership with Employment and Social Development Canada, we manage a grant budget of $8.6 million to build the capacity of these 206 NPOs.

That grant also allowed us to hold a national capacity-building conference, where we hosted not only the 206 Quebec NPOs I just mentioned, but also organizations from across Canada, including Ontario and Halifax.

We were able to put in place a support plan that involves the coaching ecosystem of these NPOs to document the impact of the initiative's funding on capacity building and to quantify in a concrete way the six results expected by Groupe 3737 for Employment and Social Development Canada. The plan allows us to measure the impact of these measures on capacity building, to be accountable, to quantify the effects and to determine how many and which NPOs have made the most progress in the four main categories we will see later.

In order to manage the total budget of $8.6 million in grants that Groupe 3737 received for Quebec NPOs, we put in place a rigorous process.

We started with the applications and the NPOs. We selected organizations and then held one-on-one meetings with representatives of each of those that passed the first phase of the process. We then analyzed all projects for due diligence and signed memoranda of understanding with NPOs that passed this second stage.

These organizations also had to assess each other, so we developed a technological tool for this purpose. The approval was then given through a common platform for the four intermediaries, SM Apply. Finally, we signed off the contributions for the sub-recipients before distributing the cheques.

We have therefore put in place a rigorous process to manage the allocation of these funds and create a context for capacity building.

The first of the six expected results is to increase the capacity of these 206 NPOs. In addition to the total funding of $8.6 million that I mentioned earlier, we have a team of six staff members who support these NPOs by providing them with individual support throughout their process, as well as a digital support platform for them.

The second expected result is the improvement of the overall attractiveness. To this end, we have carried out more than 2,500 interventions and held 36 monthly workshops, not to mention the national congress I spoke about, which brought these organizations together. We toured the regions and distributed the projects among six administrative regions of Quebec as fairly as possible.

Our committees show regional and cultural diversity. In these six administrative regions, we are in contact with Black communities from Africa, the Caribbean and host communities here in Quebec. Each committee has 28 members and—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Jean-François.

We'll now go to Mr. Southwell from the Black Business Initiative for five minutes.

[Rustum Southwell, Chef Executive Officer, Black Business Initiative]

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone.

I am speaking from Mi'gma'gi, the ancestral home of the Mi'kmaq nation, otherwise known as Nova Scotia, which is also the home of the historic Black community that's been here for over 400 years. I'm very pleased to be part of the panellists today to give you a bit of a story of the impact that investments such as the SBCCI are having in the Black community and the Black community grassroots organizations across the country.

The BBI is a targeted business development initiative created in 1996 in the province of Nova Scotia to address the unique needs in the African Nova Scotian community. The idea was for us to change and impact Nova Scotian and Canadian business landscape by promoting and assisting in the development of Black-owned businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs. We help accomplish this through a cohesive framework of several goals and initiatives, such as economic independence for individuals, an improved standard of living and wealth creation, career options for youth, and pride in communities.

We believe our purpose is changing lives by enabling economic independence. After 25 years, we have seen a considerable amount of success, which is one of the key reasons why we were selected as one of the intermediaries for the SBCCI. We've invested in agencies and organizations, such as the Black Loyalists—we helped to develop its museum by creating grants and investments—the Africville church, the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, and the youth organization known as Hope Blooms.

We've done the work that's necessary, as an intermediary, to not only provide access to the capital but also to provide wraparound services and other kinds of consulting initiatives.

In terms of being part of such an exemplary group that's created results in a short space of time, as Louis-Edgar has outlined, and working with others, like amanuel and Raymund with Tropicana, as well as the Africa Centre, we've actually seen a successful outreach to grassroots communities.

Louis-Edgar has pointed out that his number is over 200, and we also have similar numbers in Halifax. We've done over 250 projects across the country, with about $8.5 million in direct investments in organizations that otherwise wouldn't have had the opportunity to get funding. What we are seeing—and we saw that last week at the presentations—is that folks are now sufficiently competent to create their own sustainable strategies in terms of governance improvement and improvements in the quality of their organizations, but also in going for funding for other agencies.

We do that in several ways. We have some 60-plus subagreement holders whom we've invested in with wraparound services to help them improve the delivery of their services on the ground and strengthen their organizations. We've also gone ahead and created a base camp, which created a platform for several hundred of the organizations we invested in to problem solve and discuss issues, hence getting a better quality of Black organizations on the ground servicing their communities.

The projects that BBI has supported are really similar to the ones that Louis-Edgar identified: diversification of funding resources and strengthening the organizational governance through leadership, stewardship, continuous growth, communications and transparency. This is to help these organizations have a balance and compete equitably in the business and not-for-profit community.

We are not only helping organizations to develop, but we are filling the gaps where Black organizations and communities have found it difficult to compete. In fact, the world is in the fourth industrial revolution, the digital age, and in many cases our organizations are left behind. We also have the opportunity to use digital capacity resources. We've actually helped organizations, for example, who did not have a charitable status.

We've invested in organizations to do that because many grassroots organizations are without charitable status, and we know that can create a better capacity base for where those organizations would end up.

We see the SBCCI and the work that BBI does as advocates and confidantes for these organizations, where we can support organizations across the country. We've done that in several different areas and we will continue to do so. We believe that this initiative is not only groundbreaking; it is also impactful and it is definitely transformational.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Southwell. You may add anything you missed in your answers to questions during the questioning round.

We will now begin the first round of questioning with Mr. Dalton for six minutes.

Please indicate who you are directing your question to, Mr. Dalton.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you to all the witnesses for sharing your experiences and your insights. It's very much appreciated.

Last week we heard from witnesses in this standing committee testimony who said that it's not enough for government to throw money at them as if anti-Black racism is over. Do you agree with this sentiment? What are some ways that government can better support Black Canadian communities?

I'm going to give each of the witnesses 30 seconds or so to share some thoughts on that. I'll start off with Mr. Southwell.

[Rustum Southwell]

Maybe that's a good choice for me. One thing I said was that, in our community, most of the time we see that folks believe that money is the problem, but the problem is not money. The problem is the bigger issues of marginalization, suppression and racial inequities. In order to solve some of those, you have to solve the broader good rather than only using the strategy of money.

I believe that the initiative announced by Minister Hussen this morning is another way as well, but what you're seeing is that, for one of the first times, we were recruited because of the work that we are doing on the ground, the capacity that we brought to the table, and the examples and strategies that we can give.

I believe it has to be both. You need a solid, consistent and sufficient investment and you need the transferable skills of organizations that can coach, mentor and support the strategies of grassroots organizations, so that they can be accepted into delivering this type of service as well.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Jean-François, do you have any comments?

[Louis-Edgar Jean-François]

We are big believers in creating resources. I think the supporting Black Canadian communities initiative is a first step in helping Black communities create resources. Then, once the initial resources are in place, it's important to ask how we can use them to increase what's available to these organizations, whose members work hard every day. Today, I think we are collectively doing a lot of important work to achieve this goal.

To answer the question, I think that this first step has been taken on the government side. For Groupe 3737, as a proxy organization working on the ground, it is important to be the eyes and ears of the government and to see what can be improved. To this end, we must continue to ask ourselves to what extent we can add resources and, more importantly, how we can collaborate and leverage these resources to create new ones. In effect, it's turning a dollar into two dollars to support these Black Canadian communities and provide them with more services.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Jean-François.

I now invite amanuel melles to comment.

[amanuel melles]

The challenge that we face in Canada for Black communities in terms of anti-Black racism is historical. It's generational. It's complex. What this initiative and other similar initiatives, maybe at the local level, do is create the conditions for change. I think it's very important for us to really recognize that, federally, there are a number of departments at the moment that are touching, so to speak, the Black community. There is funding from different departments.

One of the things that is very important is to really start thinking about a whole-of-government approach. There has to be a strategy that actually connects the dots among the various investments that we have.

The other important thing is that a lot of these communities operate locally, municipally and provincially. We need to look at the landscape and ask how the federal government actually intentionally collaborates with local actors to really amplify some of the outcomes that we want to see.

As I keep saying again and again, capacity building is critically needed. As my colleagues have shared, there has been a lot of impact through changes. However, it's very important to recognize that there are systemic challenges that have put Black communities on the periphery and that require other interventions. For example, take the housing challenge. The national housing strategy, this multi-billion dollar investment.... The Black community is hardly participating in that.

How do we create the conditions for change? I think the capacity-building investment that the intermediaries are providing is enabling some of the local groups to work with other partners to really start opening their minds in terms of working on other levels of systems change.

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you very much.

I have just one more. I guess I'll just throw this out there: Over the past number of years—the past decades—with immigration increasing, we're just seeing a great shift, as far as even the visible minorities, who in many areas are becoming majorities. I'm from the Vancouver area.

I guess my question is this: Is that beneficial? Are we seeing something really positive as far as affecting Black Canadians, or has there been no change? We have gone through a massive change over the past, say, generation. You've all lived here for some time, so maybe I'll just throw it out to one of you—because that's all the time we have—for a quick commentary.

Mr. Southwell.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Give a quick comment, Mr. Southwell, as we're over.

[Rustum Southwell]

I wish you hadn't liked me that much.

I've been here for 50 years, myself. I moved here in 1972, so I actually have seen the change. I think that in many ways it's encouraging. It's noticeable in Nova Scotia. Toronto has always been ahead. However, diversity on its own doesn't do anything. It's about people. It's about relationships. It's really about human justice and how one can be inclusive in the economy.

It's not about just saying they're not doing it because.... It's really this: How does Canada represent its very best? How does Canada represent its economy and its society in a way that's exemplary, to show an example to the rest of the world? Part of it—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Southwell. You can follow through with that thought in other questions.

Now we have Mr. Coteau for six minutes.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses today. It is a real pleasure to have you here as community leaders, being such a key part of this initiative and building it across the country.

I want to take a minute just to ask this, and maybe I'll start with Mr. amanuel melles. From your perspective, how was it working with the other organizations, the ones that were distributing the money? Was there the ability for them to work together to collect the right type of data, to set the standards together, to put in place the right types of processes so that there was almost a uniform approach to working across the country? Can you talk a little bit about that process?

[amanuel melles]

Thanks for the question.

As I said in my introduction, NABC, or the Network for the Advancement of Black Communities, was retained as the expert service provider helping the department and Black organizations to really come up with a system of granting and working together. As my brother Rustum said, for example, they have been using platforms, as has Louis-Edgar, to bring the various organizations together. They use the joint application process. They have worked hard over months to really sort out some of these things.

Mind you, this is the first experience for Black communities to have Black intermediaries across the country. It's a good-news story. The question is how to sustain and build on this story. Yes, when you think about it, more than 750 projects have been funded by the four intermediaries. You have heard two of them today about the number of projects and the investments they have made.

It takes a village to bring solutions for Black communities. What you have here is a microcosm or an example of that. Yes, I think my organization has worked with them in the department in terms of setting up, and we've been responsible around the sustainability of it. Sustainability is not only putting in dollars. It's a question of adaptability. It's leadership, capacity and governance. All of the work they have been doing is important. The key question is this: Where do we go from here?

As you and I know, in Ontario there has been a long history of investing in projects and grassroots. I think the key question is that we need to be ready to really have a discussion about how we sustain the gains.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I have a question for Mr. Southwell about moving forward.

I'm a fan of Booker T. Washington and his double-duty dollar and the whole approach about how we leverage the way we spend in order to further support Black businesses and organizations. From your perspective, as someone involved in business, can you see us using maybe the procurement process in the future and different ways to advance even beyond the scope of this work by leveraging those dollars when it comes to services and additional purchasing?

[Rustum Southwell]

Thanks for that question.

The strong answer for me is yes, and I'll give you an example, Mr. Coteau. We've been in existence for 25 years, the BBI, and we were always in the downtown centre. As of today, we are in partnership with a Black-led organization that owns its own building, as a tenant. Now, that's a significant investment. That's a sign of something really good. We have joined the Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute and we have just moved into the top floor of that building today.

On the wealth creation and the spend, it's really doing double duty when we say that we are changing lives by it and there has been economic independence. That is a step so that we can actually use the funds and invest the dollars that will circulate in the whole community and last a bit longer. That's one quick example.

We also have to change the way we think about how we do it. Sometimes we're actually not sure if we should use suppliers from our own community. My thing is, let's give them a chance and let's support them as well. If they don't perform a second or third time, then there's enough reason, but we have to provide that opportunity as well.

We've seen that change. Just in the interest of time, those are only some of the examples.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Thank you so much. I appreciate that.

Mr. Jean-François, thank you so much for the work you're doing. From your perspective, what was one of our really big wins through this project and maybe one of the areas that you can see us, as a government or as members, improving when it comes to the long-term building of this project? You can answer either way.

[Louis-Edgar Jean-François]

I'll say there are many wins.

I think one of the big wins is the fact that we have five organizations that came together with the government to put together and deliver a program. We've been able to build a synergy together. That's the first thing.

The other win is being able to bring the organizations that we supported through this incentive. I mentioned 206 here in Quebec, but in total I think we're close to 700 across Canada. We build communities of practice. These organizations are working together to synergize and to make sure that, first, they learn from each other, and that's the way to leverage actually the financing, the resources, that were allowed for their evolution.

I think the big win is being able to put together all of these organizations to work and to deliver services to the Black community across Canada. I think that's the big win that we feel from this initiative.

It would be a shame in terms of resources, as I know this initiative and this program ends officially on March 31, 2024. Let's find a way to make sure this continues above and beyond, and a big way to do that is really to make sure we can work collectively to prioritize these four intermediary organizations and amanuel's team to continue this work beyond.

We have work to do on our side to see how we can leverage the financing, as I mentioned earlier, but also how we can work collectively to sustain this initiative with it not being dependent on government or public funding. How can we leverage that together and make sure that it continues?