Public Safety committee  I would agree there's sufficient experience to proceed with the next level of experimentation. From the private sector's perspective, one of the things that causes challenges for great small companies that start up with a great idea and have a successful business model is that they grow too fast.

Public Safety committee  I would suggest existing programs and community organizations already support this kind of goal. The St Giles Trust in the U.K. already existed prior to the program, and this partnership allowed it to scale up. I don't think anyone needs to invent new organizations. I think the better approach would be to find what we know to be existing, effective programs and give them an opportunity to scale up through this mechanism.

Public Safety committee  I would agree that social impact bonds and pay for performance are in no way a solution for every social challenge or social issue. In the beginning of my presentation, I tried to explain why I thought in this specific example it could make sense because of the cost, the lack of success in the current system, and the relatively short pathway to success where you can demonstrate within a year or two the level of reoffending rates.

Public Safety committee  Again, the starting point is already a patchwork quilt, with different levels of intervention by community. I would say that seeking some kind of standardization too early in this area is also a mistake. I think it needs the kind of approach that was taken in the U.K. in what was a very successful program, which was a reasonable pilot and a reasonable prototype.

Public Safety committee  I concur with Andy.

Public Safety committee  I would agree. The mechanism of ultimately trying to mobilize more non-government capital than government capital over time I think is a good test of the viability of the investment. I think that typically 35% to 50% from government is a fair number and a reasonable number, because it means that the balance of the shareholders and investors have real equity at risk in these kinds of programs.

Public Safety committee  Yes, I would. I think the status quo in the criminal justice system and in the health care system is that we're treating the symptoms rather than the underlying causes of some of both these health and social ills. We're intervening as a society once most of the damage has been done.

Public Safety committee  From my perspective, the goal of the criminal justice system is to rehabilitate prisoners so they can reintegrate into society and not reoffend. If your view of the criminal justice system is that it's about punishment, then I suppose you could argue it's successful. But from a rehabilitation perspective, I'd argue that if the reoffending rates are as high as they appear to be, then it is failing.

Public Safety committee  One of our projects is looking at the potential for impact investing, which would encompass this form of program. Our experience has been that companies are willing to make donations...or it's easier for them to make a donation that supports an initiative of this type, which comes from their granting arm, and to take some risk there.

Public Safety committee  I would say that it's as much about the risks for government. It was more a note of caution to say that since the aboriginal population unfortunately is disproportionately represented in the prison population, any program would need very strong engagement with the aboriginal leadership of Canada if it were to stand any chance of success, given the history of mistrust, the history of abuse, and the current focus on reconciliation around the residential schools.

Public Safety committee  Absolutely. I'm not aware of what measures you've undertaken to engage as a committee, but I would encourage early engagement with aboriginal leadership in Canada on this so that it's a program that's co-developed and co-designed, rather than one that's created for that portion of the Canadian population.

Public Safety committee  Yes, certainly.

Public Safety committee  It was called a social impact bond, but in many ways, as Andy said, it's more like a pay for performance model. Let me pull up my notes on that particular project. It was an experiment that was started under the Labour government, and it's been running for a number of years. The focus of it was on supporting the St Giles Trust, which was already working in that space, and incentivizing them on a performance basis to reduce the reoffending rates.

Public Safety committee  Yes, it's £4.7 million.

Public Safety committee  Excellent. Thank you. Just to provide a quick introduction, I'm an associate professor at the Sauder School of Business and am responsible for running an initiative called ISIS, which focuses on social innovation and social finance in British Columbia in Canada. We act as an incubator and research centre focused on applied research in the domain of social innovation in general.