Public Safety Committee on June 10th, 2014

[Gordon Hogg]

Alberta has recently announced a fund that they're going to put into social innovation and social impact bonds. There is Saskatchewan, I believe. Ontario, through MaRS, is actively moving forward. I believe that New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have done some work on it as well, and the Premier of Manitoba was present at our innovation summit.

I think all of them are at different levels. Some of them have made financial commitments to move forward. In some ways they haven't done as much background work as we have in British Columbia, but they're prepared to say that they know enough of what's going on that they want to try something.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

From your experiences as warden and your experiences in government, do you feel that social finance, whether it be pay for performance, social impact bonds, or maybe an assortment of all, could be directed and focused on crime prevention measures to reduce recidivism and so on, or do you feel that social finance should be used for other things?

[Gordon Hogg]

I think social finance has enormous potential across the spectrum. As some of your previous witnesses have said, if it's a social impact bond specifically, we already have all of the measurements in place to judge that. Our judicial system can make those judgments, so you save a lot of the challenges that go with that.

We have the same type of system in place to challenge us with child welfare, with children coming into the care of the state. We have lots of opportunities on that.

I think Finance for Good talked about 10% of the patient capital that exists in foundations across our country. If they were to put 10% into social financing, that would represent about $34 billion across our country. Using that amount of money would certainly leverage a lot of social change. It would be a balance where, again, government is not necessarily always the service provider, but has responsibility with respect to the quality that comes out of that partnership.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Thank you.

You referenced your report with the 11 recommendations, which we won't have a copy of until it has been fully translated. The question is, if you were going to say one thing to this committee or to the Government of Canada, what steps should we take next to perhaps deploy a project in one focused area? What do you think the next steps should be for this government?

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Briefly.

[Gordon Hogg]

Briefly, I mentioned the changes to the legislation of the CRA. I think that's an important enabler.

I also think you should venture into a social impact bond in different parts of the country, looking at small communities, targeted as you said, at aboriginal communities, and again, using them to help develop it.

I don't think we can come out from government and say, “Aren't we wonderful. Here's what we're providing.” It has to be an iterative process that allows that to happen, which is why I like the proposal from the BC Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres. They have worked hard at putting together a model that they want to try. I think we should be enabling them to try that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Richards, please, for four minutes.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

As much as I think what you have just said provided a fine wrap-up and was certainly one of the questions I wanted to ask as well, given that we do have a few minutes left, I would like to explore some more.

You obviously have a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience from your time as a warden, as a mayor, and as an MLA in the B.C. government. I know you have had an opportunity over the course of this most of an hour we've had to share with us a lot of that experience and knowledge.

Certainly, there are a number of projects you indicated have been undertaken, and I know you haven't had a chance to fully explain some of those.

I have one other question I wouldn't mind asking, but what I might want to do is give you some time now if there's a particular project you're particularly proud of you would like to share with us as to how it all came together, and the results, and then bring back to us how that would be applicable to us. In response to the question you just answered about moving forward with the next steps for us, could you discuss how that might be something we can learn from and that could be applicable to where we would want to head if we were looking to move towards this model of social financing?

[Gordon Hogg]

I think the long-term future is, as I mentioned, the CRACOW and Clyde Hertzman's work. I think that provides enormous potential for us in the future, and as an opportunity I don't think that's a place I would go next. That's too complex, too large, and too difficult to work with.

I think in anything you choose to move into, again, it's going to be dependent upon how you choose to do that. The reasons I think we've had successes are, first, political will. I think our public service has been innovative, but there's some inertia in terms of being able to do that. The fact that we had political will and we publicly announced the things we wanted to do really seemed to empower our public service.

That happened when we did our ActNow initiatives. I was invited to speak on our ActNow initiatives at the World Health Organization in Bahrain. They came back and studied it and said it's a best practices model. One of the reasons it's a best practices model for the world was the political will that was driving it, and the integrated model of our ADM committee that went across all ministries to ensure there was that quantum that existed within that.

Without being too redundant, I think the area I would go to would be the issue of the social impact bond with the aboriginal people, because they have done so much work in that. As I mentioned earlier, I would also look at a request for proposals.

In many ways British Columbia is ahead not because of elected representatives, but because of the service providers. They have been really good at engaging us and giving us ideas and moving us ahead. I give full credit to the service providers, and to the parents, and to the people who said, “We're frustrated. We need to look at some new ways of doing things.”

In many ways we're just trying to get caught up with parents and people who say there are a whole bunch of new ways, and let's not just put another million dollars into this program when we're not getting the impact, when things aren't getting better.

The aboriginal people have really clear statistics about how things aren't getting better for them despite billions of dollars the federal government has put into things. We just have to look at new ways of doing it, and if we can enter into partnerships with them, I think we have a good chance to have success and effect change.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Mr. Richards.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Do I have time for one more quick question?

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

We're over the time now.

What the chair would like to do on behalf of all of the committee is certainly thank the witness for coming here today. We've been in a number of provincial legislatures to witness some of the happenings. I've never been to B.C. At some particular point that might be an opportunity for us to explore.

Thank you very much for coming here today.

We will now adjourn.