Human Resources committee  If indeed social impact bonds are allowing for the implementation of projects that would not otherwise be implemented, then you can see an immediate additionality. That's not my reading of the projects that have been implemented so far. Addressing recidivism is a government fun

Human Resources committee  What we see in the U.K. is that, as it did with public-private sector partnerships, it set up a template. It set up a central agency that provides a template for the service agreements, and that would help smaller institutions in terms of legal fees and so on, but also it would e

Human Resources committee  Yes, there would be that possibility. I think that each project would have to be transparent in the sense that it would have to be published and would have to be justified, and if there are serious departures from the norm or from other projects, that would have to be highlighted

Human Resources committee  No.

Human Resources committee  It most certainly could. The key would be to design things up front to minimize that. Those problems could hinge mainly on the indicators that are used. The choice of indicators and the social service agency will always try to take low-hanging fruit, the easier targets. The gover

Human Resources committee  The assumption with the bond is that you will find an intermediary who will bring some outside money and that you will find an appropriate service delivery agency and will set targets that would not otherwise have been set. The assumption is that you're forcing efficiency on serv

Human Resources committee  I would agree with that.

Human Resources committee  I think there will always be an attraction to the social service agency of social impact bonds, and that attraction is guaranteed funding for a certain number of years. What we've tried to do in our province is to guarantee three-years of funding for social enterprises, but soci

Human Resources committee  You could argue that it could be negative if the social impact bond project reduces recidivism or the number of children in care or brings an end to homelessness at a higher rate than what was happening previously. The government would save quite a lot independently or over and a

Human Resources committee  I think the responsibility of government should be to ensure that service delivery is optimal at all times. We should have mechanisms in government that review and assess performance. In some areas we have that; in other areas we don't. We've heard that areas like health are more

Human Resources committee  I'd like to stress that many services are already provided by social service agencies. Government provides the money. Government does provide direction. In some of these areas there's quite a bit of creativity. If you look at the main areas where social impact bonds have been es

Human Resources committee  About the efficient size of service providers, larger versus smaller ones?

Human Resources committee  I think, as we heard, the MaRS centre does do that. My understanding is that has support from the McConnell Foundation. There are scale issues here, too. If these centres are small in number and they're required to assist, you might well find them assisting larger entities that

Human Resources committee  The way the bonds work is that, if they are successful, the government pays a premium. It pays a return anywhere between 5% and 30%. So in terms of ordinary costs of borrowing, clearly this would be higher than that. The rationale is that the government would be saving much more

Human Resources committee  Yes, if that were in fact the case and if it couldn't be achieved in normal delivery of services, and I believe it can be.