Human Resources committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for welcoming us back. Let me first say how much I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today. We really value opportunities to work together with partners in government, the community sector, and the private sector to improve the lives of Canadians in our communities.

Human Resources committee  To address that from our perspective, what we've found—and not theoretically, but in our experience designing these tools—is governance is a critical factor. It's a critical element of that work. A big aspect of that is a recognition that organizations that are relevant or applicable to tools such as social impact bonds, shouldn't be invested in if we don't think they know how to do that service better than we do, or anyone else does.

Human Resources committee  The first social impact bond to be established in Canada was in Saskatchewan. We as an organization didn't have a hand in designing that, but we are developing a multiple of these projects all across Canada and actually coast to coast.

Human Resources committee  Yes, absolutely. I think I can add to that as well. I would say that a lot of the presentation regarding standard setting and those kinds of principle-based approaches to engagement is actually something we would probably be very much for, because one of the challenges often is actually seeing the clarity and consistency in working with public sector partners and knowing what their priorities are among the potentially competing priorities within these tools.

Human Resources committee  To speak to that briefly, I'd say we're actually very supportive of an approach that recognizes that there are essential services that this kind of experimentation may not be relevant for at all. I think of very essential services, like an emergency room delivery and things like that, just to lay that out clearly.

Human Resources committee  I would not like to be contrasted or compared to a payday lender. I don't think that's how we think about this at all. Fundamentally, most of our clients are service delivery organizations. We designed this from their intentionality, with their perspectives at the table guiding the process from day one.

Human Resources committee  Yes. I think where we see these projects coming forward from community level organizations, from collaboratives of foundations and service providers, from various community constituents that they're actually coalescing around, this is a tool that can provide—I would really focus on—additionality to what exists now.

Human Resources committee  I'd like to add, what we see when we talk about additionality—and we think about how this idea of our talking about not just philanthropic resources, but also social investments as well—is that it quite genuinely grows the pie. We're not in any way against the growth of philanthropy.