Human Resources Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2022

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

Thank you so much. I appreciate your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Coteau.

Ms. Chabot, the floor is yours for six minutes.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for their presentations.

Mr. Jean-François, I'll start with you. I have some quick questions at the beginning, and then a more general question.

If I understood you correctly, you said that you recognized 206 non-profit organizations in the third year. How many applications did you have to reject?

[Louis-Edgar Jean-François]

There have been two calls for proposals, and a third may follow. After the first call for proposals, 40 organizations were selected and supported. After the second call for proposals, 43 other organizations were selected, for a total of 83.

What is extraordinary is that resources were made available to the organizations that were rejected after these two calls for proposals.

As a result, 83 of the 206 organizations we support were selected after the two calls for proposals, and the remaining 123 organizations could be supported through another initiative after being rejected the first time. I thank the federal government for this awareness and for its support of these organizations.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Previously, the program was administered by Employment and Social Development Canada. For non-profit organizations run by members of the Black community, what is the benefit of the program now being administered by four intermediary organizations?

This second question could also be addressed to Mr. Southwell, who represents another intermediary organization.

[Louis-Edgar Jean-François]

I think the main benefit of these intermediary organizations is that they know and understand the reality of the non-profit organizations on the ground when they provide services to their clients, the Black communities, and when they accompany and support them.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Are you able to say that these organizations, both in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada, are familiar with these four intermediaries and that you are now a reference, or is there still some unknown?

[Louis-Edgar Jean-François]

There will always be some unknown. We have a good basic understanding of the concerns of the Black communities, but there are some regional nuances to master. The pan-Canadian distribution of the four intermediary organizations, which are familiar with their respective regional realities, helps to mitigate these differences.

There are elements that need to be better understood. For example, there are Black communities in the territories, a regional reality that we do not know 100% and that we still do not understand well. In terms of percentage, I would say that our understanding is between 80% and 85%. So we still have some information to obtain and understanding to develop, hence the implementation of our digital platform and the collection of data to improve our knowledge and the effectiveness of the services we offer to the Black communities.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

You talked about holding a national conference that allowed organizations to get together and share their best practices.

You also said that you have six employees who support these organizations in their projects. In order to better understand what the supporting Black Canadian communities initiative funds, can you tell me whether your six employees are paid by this initiative, since you are an intermediary organization?

[Louis-Edgar Jean-François]

That is correct. These six employees only work for the initiative, which funds their salaries.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

I have one last question, which we would call “the burning question” in Quebec.

You say that you are the eyes and ears of the government. Are you also the eyes and ears of the members of the Black communities in the regions?

[Louis-Edgar Jean-François]

Absolutely. That's what our regional distribution is for, the idea being really to ensure support for all organizations, wherever they are, and to understand their nuances.

We see ourselves as a conduit between the federal government and these organizations so that we can ultimately serve the Black communities throughout the province of Quebec in the most appropriate way possible.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

I also hope that you do the opposite and act as a conduit between the Black communities and the government.

[Louis-Edgar Jean-François]

Yes, absolutely, it works both ways. It is a conduit between the Black communities and the government and between the government and the Black communities.

It's important to be able to act as that intermediary and to ensure a better understanding on both sides so that, at the end of the day, we can say that our work really serves our purpose, which is to help and strengthen Black communities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Jean-François and Ms. Chabot.

Madam Zarrillo, you have six minutes.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to start with Mr. melles. My interest is definitely piqued by the comment about how we tweak engagement for the new endowment plan.

I'm going to come back to asking a question, but first I wanted to thank all of the witnesses here today for the incredible work they've done to build that capacity to get such movement with so many community groups across Canada. I will have some questions about how to sustain and keep up that momentum, because I'm hearing that call.

Mr. melles, my question is around this call for sustainability. With the announcement today for the endowment fund, how can the government maximize the initiative that runs out in March and potentially fold or glove it into this endowment fund?

What would be the best way to be able to keep up the sustainability, to keep up the infrastructure and to keep up all of that governance work that's already been done by the intermediaries and the community?

[amanuel melles]

Thank you for that question.

As I've said, I think sustainability is not only dollars and cents. I think the investments are important, but we need to be able to build on the gains of the leadership that has been built and the adaptivity, or adaptive capacity, that we have been able to bring to the fore.

I think governments can do a simple thing. This is what I also was saying this morning in another meeting with a provincial minister. The federal government actually has the capacity to convene a number of other funders, including major players, using philanthropy, using the United Way. You are already working with them around the community recovery fund. Bring these Black leaders to the table and have the discussion about what it takes to sustain the gains, the good stories here.

Part of it is that there's a good story now. As I said, the landscape is shifting. We have the Black intermediaries and we have the Foundation for Black Communities. We have the Black Opportunity Fund. We have a number of key players, and we're creating a new story in Canada.

How we keep going forward with that story will require us to be bold. I think that as a federal government, within your departments, you're touching several aspects of the Black communities, such as Black entrepreneurship, where we now have the knowledge hub at Carleton University.

My peers here were talking about the platforms they have created. In our case, we have created a national capacity building portal. There are a lot of things we could do, but the most important thing is to not reinvent the wheel. We have to connect the dots. By doing that, you can bring in funders that are funding Black communities at the moment and ask what the best practices are that we need to take forward, including this amazing story we have about the endowment the minister announced today.

It's about connecting the dots. It's about not limiting sustainability to dollars and cents. There are other aspects of sustainability that we have to pay attention to. Pay attention to the lessons of the pandemic and the recovery. The other thing we have not covered today is the whole healing aspect coming out of the pandemic, where we have to really support and invest in Black communities.

Those are some of our thoughts, but I am happy to also follow up in writing to the committee on some of these ideas we have put into our own final report to the department.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you so much.

Following up on that topic around convening, and maybe even networks, Mr. Southwell, I wanted to talk to you a bit about the business community and the opportunities and the wraparound supports you talked about that have already been put into place and that you have been working on for many years.

Could you share some of those best practices that have worked to connect people, to bring people together and to help on that networking and sharing of resources?

[Rustum Southwell]

Thank you very much for the question as well.

We are somewhat of a granddaddy in the business of Black entrepreneurship development. I think we normally claim that we have been the longest-standing service organization in that sector.

It is with some real pride that the FACE coalition's work took on a lot of the testing ground that we had over 25 years in doing a form of cultural entrepreneurship support for a community that was normally in the margins. How do you work with rehabilitating credit while trying to do wealth creation, and how do you drive excellence in entrepreneurship delivery while trying to work with micro-enterprises as well? We now have a very vast range of companies that we now have to invest in and develop with help like the Black Opportunity Fund, FACE, BNI and other support agencies.

One of the things we're seeing now, as Louis-Edgar has pointed out, is a better willingness and capacity for the Black community organizations to work together. It's not us against anyone else. It's how we best deliver those services. We understand that there will be some overlap, some competition, but for the most part, it's really about putting those best practices on the ground, using the investments and being very rigid, with rigour, on how we do those things as well.

Our success extends to the work we've done with community organizations. I mentioned the Black Loyalists, the Black Cultural Centre and others, such as the African Nova Scotian Music Association and those areas. Those kinds of cultural stories and those types of strategies—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

You have 10 seconds, Mr. Southwell.

[Rustum Southwell]

—will always make a difference.

That's my passion, as you can tell.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you.

Now it's over to Mr. Liepert for five minutes.

[Ron Liepert, Conservative, Calgary Signal Hill, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for each of our witnesses today. I'd like you to outline the work you have done looking at other countries. Do they have similar programs? It doesn't necessarily have to be just for the Black community.

What programs are there in other countries? How successful have they been? What we could learn from them? Can we measure our particular allocation of dollars, versus some of those other kinds of programs in other countries?

It's always hard to determine a level of success. I'm not suggesting you're saying this, but the fact is that if an organization were granted a particular sum of money and one job was created, the organization could consider that to be a success. How do we benchmark? To me, in benchmarking something like this, it would be good to compare it to similar programs that are happening elsewhere in the world.

I'd like each of you to comment on whether you've done that kind of work internationally.

[amanuel melles]

Maybe I can get us started.

A lot of the work around capacity building in terms of these practices came from international development work. Without going very far, south of the border in the United States, there have been big foundations that have invested for almost 25 or 30 years in perfecting the art and science of capacity building.

When the intermediaries and the departments came together with Black community leaders, NABC—my organization—was able to bring some of those best practices to inform the design of this entire initiative. The Black intermediaries you see today are building from the best practices of many intermediaries who have done this work specifically around capacity-building grants. I'm talking about big foundations like the Ford, MacArthur, Kellogg and other foundations that come together in a network called Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. Their site is geofunders.org.

My organization is part of that network. Those best practices that are informing our capacity building, our understanding of capacity building and the organizational cycle that organizations went through come from that practice.

Within Canada, there's also a lot of knowledge and a body of practice. I think one of the things we could do as the next phase of sustaining this is to come together. That's why I liked the congress that Groupe 3737 organized in Montreal that brought together more than 200 leaders to exchange lessons learned. At the core of systems change is collective learning.

I think we can come together and build minimum standards around governance, leadership, evaluation, data and so on. There are a lot of examples. United Way Canada and United Way Greater Toronto have built these community impact standards. Imagine Canada has this standard. There's a lot of stuff we can do.

The big question now is how we move forward as we look at the next few years. We're laying a good foundation now. We have funded so many grassroots projects—more than 750—through this initiative alone. To sustain them, we need to start looking at new designs and new organizational models—place-based and quadrant-based—in various parts of the country. Look along linguistic groups and various intersectionalities so that we can organize groups. Bring other funders to talk about how we sustain this.

Thank you.

[Rustum Southwell]

I will jump in here, if Louis-Edgar doesn't mind.

I think amanuel did a good job on the not-for-profits in those sectors, so I might take my few seconds to identify to Mr. Liepert that, yes, there has been significant work, and some of it is south of the border.

The U.S., some years ago in the 1950s, created an organization called NMSDC—the National Minority Supplier Development Council—which was to do exactly that. It was to drive not only the federal government but the private sector to invest in a very strong economy of persons and racially visible communities and entrepreneurs.

That example helped to create CAMSC, which is now in Canada. It's a sister organization that drives procurement in those areas. Many entrepreneurs from racially visible ownership sometimes have difficulty getting into the network of larger corporations, as well, in the supply chain. That supply chain management is key.