Human Resources committee  Fully realizing.

Human Resources committee  I think it depends on the project. Obviously if you have some private sector investors, they are going to make a calculation as to whether they are going to put up money for such a venture, so they are going to be making calculations. In many instances they found that private sector investors were not very keen to get involved in this area.

Human Resources committee  Yes.

Human Resources committee  We do have a certificate program in non-profit sector management. Financing is part of that. I would say that social financing is a sub-theme that runs through that course and certainly through some of the research we're doing. There needs to be a lot more work done on this area.

Human Resources committee  I don't think we have enough evidence. The initial report was that there was a very mild positive effect on recidivism rates; however, the sample that was selected was not a random sample. It was actually made up of people who had volunteered for the program. So the change there could have been simply based upon sample bias.

Human Resources committee  In a case similar to that one, they had negative results. The results are quite mixed, and I think they were also potentially influenced by other sorts of factors. As I said, it's too bad the experiment didn't run longer, because we would have had more evidence to try to make a determination on this.

Human Resources committee  Do you want to try to....

Human Resources committee  I'm not sure there's a real answer to that except that you have to investigate what you're investing in very carefully and determine whether the type of project is well designed and what the likelihood of the outcome is based upon the quality of the players you have around the table.

Human Resources committee  Data is, I think, absolutely critical. To know if they're going to be effective or not, we're going to need substantial data. That means, obviously, far more than counting bums in seats. It means actually using statistics from organizations like Stats Canada, being able to attach those to projects, trying to evaluate the outcomes of things like recidivism within the larger context of other factors happening within society.

Human Resources committee  Yes, absolutely.

Human Resources committee  I think marketization is always at a certain tension with mission. The emphasis here is certainly going to be for the private investor to try to get a good outcome in terms of their profit. That may put some pressure upon the mission of the non-profit that's actually delivering the service to do things in particular ways to try to get to a particular outcome.

Human Resources committee  Those are very good questions. I think SIBs do pose some challenges in regard to this. The way the SIBs are currently set up, I think the non-profits simply become the deliverers of the service, so that all of the financial dealings go through the private sector. In that regard, I guess they've been designed in a way in which the rules don't have to be changed, but really what that does is limit the role of non-profits—and I think this is another issue you raise here—to being simply the delivery agents.

Human Resources committee  Yes, on a limited scale, I don't think that would be a bad thing to do, but again, with the cautions that I think we've pointed out here. I think you need to make the investments into the evaluation tools we're going to use to actually look at what the actual effects shall be.

Human Resources committee  I think as well that some of the challenges that non-profits have in terms of supporting their communities have to do with a lot of the current types of funding models that exist in all provinces and at the federal and local levels. These tend to be short-term types of financing, which very tightly control where spending can go.

Human Resources committee  I think the reality is that we don't actually know yet, because there hasn't been a social impact bond that has gone through the full process. The first one was in Peterborough, in the U.K., which was launched in 2010. These tend to be sort of longer-term types of projects, but unfortunately that one was cancelled in early 2014, so we don't actually have in place yet any completed SIBs that we can evaluate in terms of their effectiveness.