Human Resources committee  That's perfect.

Human Resources committee  I guess I would say that depending on the investor, financial gain may or may not be the important thing. One of the things we see in this space, speaking from the side of the investor, is that you have finance-first investors, who are looking for the win-win situation where there's financial gain and a social or environmental impact from their investment.

Human Resources committee  Well, the ideal, just like in traditional investing, is that you look at where you can optimize, where you get the most impact for the lowest risk and the best return. But it's really hard to get them all at the top. You look for that intersection of the best you can do on each of those fronts, if that's what you're looking for.

Human Resources committee  Sorry, what is the what between...?

Human Resources committee  If you're talking from the perspective of a social enterprise, I think generally what we see is that government is more willing. I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, but government tends to be, and we think is, appropriately positioned to accept more risk in pursuit of the greater good or the longer-term benefit to Canadians at large.

Human Resources committee  I think the banks basically apply, as you have alluded to, very rigorous, very well-established risk management protocols in evaluating any type of financing. One of the things that we, the social finance team, have been talking about to our commercial banking colleagues—in fact all the time, as we haven't figured out exactly where to do this yet—is the possibility of layering riskier money, which might be the money from our social impact fund, with conventional bank financing.

Human Resources committee  —to help start to solve that challenge of how to do high-risk things when you are a highly regulated, risk-averse Canadian bank.

Human Resources committee  As far as I know, the financial sector is—and Andy's smiling, so I'm interested in his response—to my knowledge, the only sector in Canada that is regulated to have to produce a public accountability statement every year. I'm not sure what type of information currently isn't in our public accountability statement that Andy's thinking about, but I don't actually see a problem.

Human Resources committee  Sure. I probably didn't bucket them very well as I was wrapping up, but the other two things that I think are important for government fall into the intermediary and the demand-for-capital sides. In the intermediary space, it's definitely making available the provision or collection of data—information about the cost, the value of solving social problems.

Human Resources committee  Thanks. That's a great question. The Responsible Investment Association report that you're referring to just came out a few weeks ago. It was done by the RIA with support from RBC corporate and RBC's global asset management group, the people who develop mutual funds and products for investors.

Human Resources committee  Yes. The last way is to help develop and fund capacity-building programs for social entrepreneurs, which we definitely see as an issue. They are investable social enterprises. There are a lot of great ideas out there. They need to be investable, and there's a lot that we all can do to make that happen.

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much for the opportunity to present to your committee. I thought I would take a couple of minutes to tell you a little bit about the RBC social finance initiative to give you some context, and then jump into a description and explanation of how we see the different parts of the market and what our observations are regarding the role of government in helping to move forward this area of finance.