At that point British Columbia was leading Canada in a dramatic fashion. We had lots of interest in the reports we had done. I had previously been the minister for health promotion, and we developed a model called ActNow, which was developing policies in all areas. We created in that model an assistant deputy ministers' committee that reviewed the service plan of every ministry and ensured that, like the Ministry of Highways, it had to have something about health promotion as part of that model. That became the intersectoral breakdown, and the way we tried to break that down. We had to have the political will driving it, and then that type of model.
Since then we've seen five or six provinces now moving ahead with social impact bonds, looking at social innovation, wanting to move carefully into that. We have been working hard at balancing our budget in British Columbia, and the challenges that are associated with that. I think most governments don't want to fail. Our Treasury Board wants to make sure that we do something that is a success, that does happen. An innovation is not always about success. Some risks are inherent in that, that I think have to be followed through with.
The U.S. Senate just finished hearings on social impact bonds last month. A number of proposals were presented to them. I think the outcome was it seemed a bit airy-fairy, so we need to be able to get something that's concrete to work at and to manage. I think that's one of the goals we have to look at and find more concrete ways to present that.
I have given your clerk a copy of the action plans we have, as well as a proposal that came to us. We had representatives of the BC Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres on our task force. They have developed a proposal for a social impact bond. They've developed a business case for connecting indigenous elders and families to reduce neglect and the costs of placing children in foster care. It is, I think, an interesting proposal, and one that their initial analysis says would help reduce the number of children coming into care.