Public Safety Committee on May 13th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Colleagues, welcome to meeting number 23 of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. The orders of the day, of course, are that we are studying social finance as it relates to crime prevention in Canada.

We have two witnesses with us today. We would certainly like to welcome Shawn Tupper and Kathy Thompson from the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. Kathy, of course, serves as the assistant deputy minister for the community safety and countering crime branch. Mr. Tupper is the assistant deputy minister for the emergency management and programs branch.

It is the chair's understanding that we generally have 10 minutes for opening statements, but I believe we will have a 20-minute combined presentation, which certainly falls within the parameters of the committee's work.

Please go ahead.

[Kathy Thompson, Assistant Deputy Minister, Community Safety and Countering Crime Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to address you today.

I gather you would like to learn more about social finance and how this approach can advance crime prevention in Canada.

I am very happy to hear that the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security wants to carry out a study on this topic, as this will help clarify the work being considered by Public Safety Canada.

We'll begin today by providing some background information on crime prevention. Then my colleague, Shawn Tupper, will provide some information on social innovation, and we'll explore social innovation more broadly to also encompass social financing.

The growing costs of crime and criminal justice issues concern all levels of government in Canada. Therefore, we have to ask the question whether these costs are viable, especially in the long term, and whether governments can continue to manage all the costs by themselves.

Crime prevention is a key component of efforts to relieve the increasing pressures on the criminal justice system.

Well-designed crime prevention and reduction interventions can have a positive influence on behaviours, and crimes can be reduced or prevented by addressing risk factors that lead to offending.

Strategic interventions can help not only contain the growing costs of the criminal justice system, but also reduce the pressure on other sectors such as social services.

The federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for justice and public safety confirmed this at their meeting in January 2012, when they agreed to make crime prevention and rehabilitation a joint priority in order to fight the mounting pressures on the criminal justice system and to reduce the costs of traditional crime control measures.

Through Public Safety Canada's national crime prevention strategy, the Government of Canada is working with the provinces and territories to provide national leadership on effective and cost-efficient ways to prevent and reduce crime by addressing risk factors before a crime is committed.

Through this strategy, Public Safety Canada seeks to acquire and share knowledge on effective crime prevention interventions in order to help decision-makers from all levels of government and communities to make informed decisions on the most appropriate preventive measures.

This is achieved through providing time-limited funding to organizations to implement evidence-based crime prevention projects with at-risk populations, and conducting impact evaluation studies on selective projects.

The national crime prevention strategy targets the following groups: children between 6 and 11 years old, youth between 12 and 17 years old and young adults between 18 and 24 years old with risk factors related to delinquent behaviour, aboriginal people and northern communities, as well as high-risk offenders who are no longer under the supervision of correctional services.

The strategy focuses on priority crime issues such as youth gangs, youth violence, drug crimes, hate crimes and online bullying.

Let me give you a few examples of projects that have managed to obtain funding through the national strategy

and that have continued to be funded post-NCPS funding.

The national crime prevention strategy's youth gang prevention fund provided $1.9 million in funding to the Halifax Regional Municipality to implement the youth advocate program—also called YAP—in Halifax from 2008 to 2011. The focus of the program was on preventing youth in the target age of 9 to 14 years from engaging in gang-related activities and anti-social and criminal behaviours.

Evaluation results from youth exiting the program showed decreases in conduct problems, victimization, impulsivity, and delinquency. Additionally, YAP was found to be cost-effective, with the cost per participant being significantly less than the cost of having a child in care or in custody. YAP continues to operate in Halifax, post-NCPS funding, with support from the Halifax Regional Municipality.

En 2008 and 2011, as part of the national crime prevention strategy's youth gang prevention fund, Public Safety Canada gave $1 million to the Calgary Police Service to implement the program Youth at Risk, or YARD. That program targeted youth between 10 and 17 years old who were either gang members or likely to be involved in gang activities.

The outcome of the evaluation, before and after the program, shows a marked improvement in young people's attitude to jobs and to family ties and communication.

The YARD program is still running in Calgary, Alberta, and receives funding from the Ministry of Justice and the Solicitor General of Alberta.

To achieve effective crime prevention in Canada, the implementation of the national crime prevention strategy is based on all of these elements: integrated with other programs and services; targeted on addressing risk factors; promoting the implementation of evidence-based crime prevention, which is key; focused on specific priorities; and has the potential to yield positive outcomes.

Through the strategy, Public Safety Canada is working with all levels of government and various other non-governmental national partners and community partners, such as the crime prevention committee of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the YMCA, the Big Brother and Big Sister organizations, and so on.

The strategy targets those most vulnerable to delinquency and tackles the main risk factors that increase the likelihood of people committing crimes.

To address the limited resources and to obtain the maximum benefits, the strategy focuses on the most vulnerable populations—which I mentioned a few moments ago—high-risk communities and priority crime issues.

Over the past five years, as a result of the replication, implementation and evaluation of promising crime prevention programs and models, the projects funded through the strategy have produced useful evidence-based information and data on both effective and ineffective practices in various Canadian contexts.

Public Safety will continue to identify what works in Canada and build on Canadian-specific knowledge on the economic impacts of crime prevention programs, to create amenable conditions to facilitate the sustainability and the opportunity to ramp up effective crime prevention initiatives across the country.

Under the national crime prevention strategy, Public Safety Canada is currently studying innovative models for working with its partners in order to prevent and reduce crime, youth crime in particular, by developing and implementing sustainable and effective practices.

The federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for justice and public safety have agreed that crime prevention practices must be effective and we must find the means to sustain them.

In November 2013, the ministers approved a national action plan on crime prevention, seeking to advance the sustainability of evidence-based crime prevention practices and to study social innovation mechanisms.

Recognizing that evidence-based crime prevention programs and practices help reduce crime and victimization levels as well as related costs, the action plan reflects the need to continue to improve Canadians' knowledge of effective practices and programs.

I will now give the floor to my colleague, Shawn Tupper.

[Shawn Tupper, Assistant Deputy Minister, Emergency Management and Program Branch, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Thanks, Kathy.

The Government of Canada funds and supports initiatives devoted to addressing some of Canada's most pressing social and economic challenges. These initiatives are continuously challenged by the breadth, scale, complexity, and interconnectedness of the issues they're designed to address. Decades of government interventions demonstrate that sustainable solutions to social issues cannot be undertaken by single sectors or individual organizations. As such, these issues need to be approached in ways that utilize the competencies, capabilities, and resources of multiple collaborating partners across various sectors.

Social innovation is an increasingly popular term used to described new, innovative strategies applied to current and intractable social problems that have not been resolved successfully using traditional means. Social innovation, therefore, encourages the public, private, and community sectors to work together to mobilize or strengthen social partnerships and to leverage new ideas and sources of capital for public good with the view of generating sustainable economic and social value for Canadians.

Governments are already implementing various interventions to prevent offending and recidivism among at-risk groups of the population. However, as in the case in the health domain, most government resources are currently spent on the curative and reactive rather than preventative and proactive approaches. Leveraging new partnerships and new sources of funding can go far in advancing effective crime prevention in Canada. For instance, a crime prevention program that has been funded by Public Safety and has proven to be successful could potentially be implemented more broadly across the country if new funding partners are secured or new networks may be created providing opportunities to expand the reach of their intervention.

Social innovation calls for a different role for government and for alternative ways of thinking about how social change occurs and how social good can be achieved. Given that much government funding is time limited, the issue of moving from pilot interventions to self-sustaining programs quickly becomes central.

Governments do not have the level of financial resources required to fund these programs in a long-term, sustainable way. Leveraging new partnerships that can sustain successful projects once government time-limited funding ends is key to ensuring the public safety needs of the communities we serve. Our aim is to implement effective and efficient social innovation programs that can become sustainable. For instance, social enterprises that are provided seed money by government and private sector investors would eventually become sustainable as the business thrives and revenue is reinvested in the enterprise. Our vision is that, once programs are sustainable, governments would be engaged in the role of facilitator and public educator, while providing complementary programming to promising and truly successful initiatives.

So what are our roles when applying a new concept like social innovation to our work? Let me be clear that, when getting something new off the ground, a partnership approach is needed. The government cannot do this alone, and others need to be involved. That is why I'm happy that there is such interest from the not-for-profit sector and the private sector in working together to address social issues.

To encourage the development of government community partnerships, Public Safety Canada is interested in fostering crime prevention projects that employ social innovation models to sustain and expand the important work that is already being done, that are attractive to potential investors, and that have demonstrated social benefit. These are the types of projects that we should aim to replicate more systematically across the country, ultimately enabling more local communities to tackle local challenges through leveraged resources with government and private or not-for-profit partners.

The government's role in this area is to encourage and facilitate synergies and work across all levels—federal, provincial, municipal, not-for-profit organizations, and the private sector—to develop best practices. It is encouraging to see the growing interest of the private sector in financing approaches that create positive social outcomes.

Social innovation recognizes that the government's role needs to move from doer to facilitator and that new partners must be involved in finding solutions to social problems. The government needs to support the development and implementation of social innovation and social finance tools. We need to be innovative and proactive for social finance to flourish in Canada.

That's all of our formal presentation. There are a number of annexes as well in this deck, particularly annex 1, which will give you a sense of an offending pathway. This is a life-course analysis that was done within our department. We affectionately call it Tyler. It's a fictional character that is based on some of the prototypical offending trajectories that we see in the work that we do. Basically, what this page presents for you are four different scenarios.

The red scenario is the scenario if there is no intervention for this individual, and this individual becomes involved with the law. Essentially, this individual between the ages of zero and 30 will cost the system $1.53 million. That is the cumulative cost of police, the courts, incarceration, and programming.

We can look, then, if interventions occur, at points in this individual's life and the impact those interventions can have. For instance, looking at the yellow part of this chart, if an intervention is made when this individual is 15 years old, the cost of that intervention being $4,500, the impact would be to reduce the cost of that individual to the system by $500,000. We have used, in this analysis, only those interventions that have proven evidence-based outcomes, such that we have a fair degree of certainty that we understand what these impacts would be.

If you look through, then, as we move down through the colours, the green is an intervention made for this individual at six years old. The intervention, again, costs $5,800, but the impact in getting to this child early, and avoiding a life course of association with crime, would reduce the cost of that individual to the system by $1 million.

These are the kinds of impacts that the crime prevention program—and the kinds of investments we make in that program—can have with respect to youth who have at-risk factors in their lives. I think that's a really important thing, because it gives you a sense of the dollars and the mechanisms we have. It gives you, as well, I think, a little bit of a sense of where the savings land. Obviously, this gives you a sense of the national picture as far as the cost of policing and delivery of the criminal justice system goes, where costs are associated with provincial and territorial governments. So it's a cumulative impact that benefits both the federal and provincial and territorial governments.

I think, Mr. Chair, that would be the end of our formal presentation. We're now available for questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much. Certainly we could simply say the intention is to demonstrate quite clearly that old analogy that an ounce of prevention is worth that pound of cure.

The chair is delighted to see that, quite frankly, you have an obvious passion for carrying this forward, and I think that's great to be able to come before a committee.

This is certainly an issue from which the committee can take what they wish. But certainly when we take a look at the community involvement in the entire process, whether we're talking about a Canadian Tire Jumpstart program, as an example, and/or whatever, and how it impacts all the way through, there are so many different ways we can interact at some particular stage and/or at each and every stage, but of course subject to...subject to...subject to....

At this particular point, thank you very kindly for coming in here today. I'm certainly looking forward to some of the questions that will come from all of our colleagues, and we'll see where this study will take us.

First up for questions is Ms. James, please.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to both of our witnesses to the committee.

Thank you for the general overview as well as moving into some aspects of social innovation and finance.

The question I need to start with is with regard to NCPC. This is a program that was launched by the Conservatives in 2008, and obviously it has to do with crime prevention. But there are other aspects of that particular program, such as gathering data and so on. I'm just wondering if you could speak to the relevance of that information that's been gathered, and whether you feel we have solid information to determine whether some programs are successful and some are not.

[Shawn Tupper]

I think what we did in 2008 was recognize that there was a lack of Canadian data. I think up until that point we had been largely relying on data and extrapolating from data that were from American and British sources, primarily. So, I think the reconstruction of the program in 2008 was specifically designed to create Canadian data, so that we understand how interventions work in Canada, and how they work for the Canadian population.

Certainly one of the things we have been very active on, in terms of the investments, is looking at the outcomes of those investments and doing appropriate evaluation of the program and of individual projects, so that we actually do have a much better understanding of what works in Canada. We've been able to utilize models we see produced around the world but adapt them to Canadian circumstances. In doing so, we create information for cities, communities, and social services that give them really valid and important information, allowing them to better understand how they should be spending their money.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I'm glad that we did talk a bit about the collection of data, because this program really has an expiry date. It's good for five years. After the five-year period, there may be programs out there that have been successful, but in fact, that period is over. Although we're doing crime prevention, it was also a period to gather the data to evaluate and make decisions as to what works best here in Canada.

I want to thank you for mentioning other countries, such as Britain and the United States, that have been doing analysis on this subject. We've utilized some of that information to help us with our programs here.

I just need to ask a question. For some of the programs that have been successful, do you think that there should be an extension of the funding for those particular programs? Then I'll ask a second question after that.

[Kathy Thompson]

As I mentioned in some of my remarks, that's not certainly the case in all the successful programs. In a number of the programs where we have been able to demonstrate that they have been successful, they've been able to secure continued funding through provincial, municipal, community, or other organizations largely because they've been able to demonstrate, through evidence-based studies, that they do make a difference. They've been able to secure the funding, in large part, because of the initial funding that led to that evidence.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

I know that it's important to evaluate long term whether.... Five years is not necessarily enough time, because someone could turn to a life of crime 10 years down the road. So I think it's important that we continue to collect the data.

You mentioned a couple of programs. One was the youth gang prevention fund. It's part of the NCPC umbrella that I'm familiar with. There have been a number of announcements in and around the Scarborough area. I'm from Scarborough Centre. You mentioned, I think you said YAP, and you said it was successful. The question is, how do we know it's successful? What are the measurable targets to determine if a program is successful or not?

I know some of the things you talked about—attitude change, and so on—but how do we know that it's actually stopping crime in the long term?

[Kathy Thompson]

I'll start. You can add to it, Shawn.

In some cases, it's fewer points of contact with the criminal justice system. In other cases, it's sometimes more anecdotal in terms of reports from teachers and parents, and in terms of improved familial links in relationships. Sometimes it's a combination of both, but certainly the points where they intersect with the criminal justice system is always a key interest.

[Shawn Tupper]

I think, as well, we look at the risk factors that might be evident in an individual's life. If they're associating with people who are involved in crime, or if they have a family where there are issues within the family that may be crime-based or violence-based. We're looking at whether they're staying in school. Employment records are track records. What we do in these programs is measure whether people stay in school, whether they stay employed, if they're in a gang intervention program, and if they stay out of the gang.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

In my former life, I worked in IT. We had to do performance reviews, and we had measurable targets that we could actually...concrete numerical data. I mean, basically you wanted to improve on your performance. You wanted to do this and that, and after the year we could actually go back and see whether we met those targets.

I'm trying to figure out what metrics are used to determine if a program was successful. I know you could say that teachers have said they stay in school, and so on, but what were the actual targets from the start of the project to the finish? Were there actual targets in place, and how do we know that, long term, it has actually worked?

[Shawn Tupper]

I think the targets would vary by the kind of program, and indeed they vary a little bit by community. We try to design these things to take advantage of the local community assets. We definitely do look at contacts with the law and either the avoidance of, or the reduction of, contact with the law. But it does matter to us in terms of looking at their participation in the program. Do they stay in the program? Do they attend every session? Are they meeting the objectives of the program?

Some of our programs are actually school-based. They actually have curriculum that they need to work through, so it is a question of being able to measure that they're actually achieving the curriculum that's defined for them in the school. It varies by project and the type of project. We have lots of studies. If the committee wants to look at that, we can provide you with some of the evaluations that we've done of the different programs that would give you that evidence.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Ms. James.

Now, Mr. Garrison, please, you have seven minutes.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm still at a bit of a loss in terms of what we're actually studying in the committee since we didn't have any consultations about this study beforehand. I thank the two witnesses for bringing the larger context to the table, because what I find when we look at, for instance, the deck you've handed out on crime prevention and social innovation, we have 12 pages, and only the last one deals with social finance. So I'm still concerned that we've selected arbitrarily one piece of the national crime prevention strategy to look at in detail.

I was glad to hear Ms. Thompson mention that the provinces and the federal government had agreed that rehabilitation and crime prevention were joint priorities. I'm also glad when you look at the crime prevention strategy that it says that one of its goals is to prevent future offending among vulnerable populations. I guess if I had my way we'd be talking much more about mental illness than we would be about social innovation.

This committee just tabled a report on policing, where the evidence we heard from police was that their costs are driven primarily by mental health and addiction problems. We have a current crisis in our correctional system in accommodating people, which was identified by the Auditor General. A large number of those people are people with mental illness. I believe we actually have a crisis in the way we treat people with mental illness, who will eventually come out of prison, hopefully. Although, I have to say, I think dealing with the question of mental illness is urgent since the reports of the Correctional Investigator show that an additional 58 prisoners have committed suicide in custody since the death of Ashley Smith.

Rather than go on about the mental illness part, I guess what I'm saying is, I think this committee would be better off spending a larger proportion of its time looking at that aspect of national crime prevention than this narrow focus on social innovation.

I'm going to give the chair a notice of a motion:

That the Committee conduct a study into all aspects of mental illness in Correctional Service of Canada institutions with a focus on effective programming for inmates, the design of new and existing facilities to meet the needs of 21st Century correctional practices, and minimizing threats to offender safety and the safety of correctional staff and report its findings to the House of Commons.

We won't be dealing with that notice of motion today, but it sets aside my concern. Now I'll actually ask you some questions about this narrower aspect. But, again—

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Mr. Norlock has a point of order.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

If I may, it's not a point or order, but it's just to inform the committee that this committee has done exactly that study, and not that many years ago. I know one of the researchers accompanied us, and I believe we did mental health and addiction in prisons across Canada. We went to Norway and we went to Great Britain to see their programming.

When we do discuss the notice of motion, perhaps the chair could advise the committee when that study took place, and perhaps Mr. Garrison might make himself aware of that study and see if his motion may have already been dealt with by this committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you.

Rather than getting into a discussion on this, the motion is in order. It's a substantive motion, but as such, coming before the committee, it would have to be translated. So the notice of motion—

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

It's in both languages.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

It is in both languages?

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Chair, I'm fine if it's not distributed, or we deal with it further today. We can deal with it at the earliest opportunity. It's simply my way of saying I think we've selected a narrow part of what's before us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

That's fine, but a substantive notice requires 48 hours—

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

That's right.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

—and as such we will deal with this at a later time.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

That's what I was expecting.