Again, from the social impact bond, we've created external longer-term housing for these young moms. Keeping them together and dealing with all of that crap is....
I have this statistic in my head and I have to spit it out. Then I can refocus.
Putting an infant in a group home now costs $600 a day. Can you imagine how much support we could parachute to these young women for 600 bucks a day? We could have somebody living with them and supporting them 24 hours a day.
The issues are so complex, but what you need to have is.... We have ongoing 24-hour support for our young moms. When there's an issue and they call and they need help, you need to be there.
We had a video company come. It was called HitPlay Productions. They wanted to bastardize the social impact bond, but after about a week of being there, when she was leaving, she said, “Do you know what? I realize why this bond and why this is working so well.” I looked at her and I said, “Finally, you're going to admit that it's going to work.” She said, “Yes. It's because you guys are there after the cameras are off.”
After the problems and after the issues and once the healing journey begins, because there are challenges, we need to be there after the cameras are off. We need to support women because their issues are so huge. Indigenous women are more likely to be sold on our streets in Canada than any other ethnic individuals. They're vulnerable. I think what we need to do is spend more time and more resources on healing. They don't want to see counsellors all the time, but they want to have better lives. That ability to move ahead is the best healing for any women, or anybody, really.
We need to set up our bonds or whatever we're looking at doing. We need to get our business involved. We need to get our community involved, because this committee that we have set up, if our proposal is accepted, is going to bring business, and they're not getting anything. Their investment is their time and their expertise, so we need to invest.