Finance committee  Thank you very much. My name is Allyson Hewitt, and I am the director of social entrepreneurship at the MaRS Discovery District here in Toronto. It's one of the nodes of SIG, the Social Innovation Generation. SIG is a national network, a collaborative of the McConnell Foundation

Finance committee  I think it's basic awareness. I really think people don't have a sense that there's a social enterprise sector in Canada and how vibrant it is. In the U.K. we've had some great champions. They've been able to push it through a social finance agenda. We have been without those cha

Finance committee  I agree. It's all quite new, and I think just learning from what's happening in the U.K. and the U.S., we can now.... They've been doing it for a couple of years, particularly this new hybrid structure. We can take their learnings and accelerate their learnings for Canada, make i

Finance committee  In the United Kingdom, they have what they call community interest companies. In the United States they have L3Cs, low-profit limited liability corporations. We've looked at both of these to see what they could do to increase access to capital for those engaged in social purpose

Finance committee  This is actually one of the barriers. There's a perception that it's interfering with for-profit. If you look at what they've done with the CIC model in the U.K. and with the L3C model in the U.S., you'll see that they've addressed this. They put provisions on things. There's an

Finance committee  Absolutely.

Finance committee  Quebec is absolutely a model. What we were talking about here is some federal legislation, which is why I didn't address Quebec. Before I came to this session, I just presented with someone from Quebec on the social economy, writ large, and how effective that is, and the kind of

Finance committee  Well, Desjardins is a leader, for example, in this area--

Finance committee  Ultimately, if you look at the spectrum, you'll see that charities historically didn't generate any income, and then you had for-profits that didn't give anything back to the community. We're putting pressure on both sides of that, so now you have things such as corporate social

Finance committee  We're putting pressure on them because we think it's the right thing to do, from a sustainability point of view, both economically and for the environment, and for social issues and to encourage innovation. If we can get people to use the brain power that's currently in the priva

Finance committee  Correct. Perfect.

Finance committee  If you look at it who's being “employed” by Eva's Phoenix, they are marginalized homeless youth. We either keep them in a shelter system and they go on to prisons, go on to be a drain on the system, or we give them real skills. The print shop down the street is not going to hir

Finance committee  I talked about the spectrum. I could offer them the other end of it, which is that if they are a for-profit business I want to set up systems that would encourage them to hire those youths so they're mainstreaming them. Competitive business has to be prepared to take on these mar

Finance committee  It really is. It's about impact. So if they're doing a great job.... My job, writ large, is about social innovation, so if we looked at this group and said that they're really doing great work, they've figured it out, and they've got it, we would want to expand that.

Finance committee  Yes. I really used to be a little bit pie in the sky, but I actually want them to have access to a variety of forms of capital. If charitable dollars are available and people want to bring them in, that's fine, but they should also have the opportunity to get access to capital to