Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good afternoon. Thank you for this opportunity. I apologize that I couldn't join you in person. I come to this conversation from the housing and homelessness arena and as someone who has been an affordable housing developer that has housed over 4,000

Human Resources committee  There are two important distinctions. Now you're getting a fairly traditional investment model, where you say you put in block money, you put in this much and you get this many units. I think the opportunity here is first to take advantage of the existing investment. A lot of the

Human Resources committee  That's where I was concerned about the application of the social impact bond and private equity. To me the definition of social enterprise and social finance is a lot like what you heard from the representative from the Royal Bank, where you bring private equity in. The private

Human Resources committee  In our low-income housing tax credit, high-net-worth individuals or groups or corporations, whoever, have some money and they pay a significant amount of federal income tax. They could contribute or invest some portion of that income into affordable housing. The government at the

Human Resources committee  I think there's a huge opportunity. In Calgary, for example, they are in prime real estate. They are low density, so there's lots of space where you could redevelop. You can extract a lot of financial value out of property and redevelop it and maintain that housing for its social

Human Resources committee  There are a few points in there, with the first question being, how did we get here? We can trace the rise of modern mass homelessness in Canada to the withdrawal of the federal government. Over the course of probably 25 to 30 years, there's been about a 46% reduction in federal

Human Resources committee  One of the benefits of social impact bonds is that they can create a discipline, as you say, around the expected outcome. You're exactly right. Today, we can track every cow from birth to burger in Alberta but we can't tell you how many people experience homelessness in Canada,

Human Resources committee  The Americans have been using these for years. They are called the homeless management information systems. There's off-the-shelf technology; it's actually pretty straightforward. But it's a question of how you engage all of the different funders, all of the different agencies in

Human Resources committee  It absolutely can be done. There are good examples of homeless management information systems. There are over 300 communities in the U.S. today that have them. Edmonton and seven cities in Alberta, including Calgary, have management information systems in place. There are variati

Human Resources committee  I think that referred to the low income housing tax credit where a $150-million investment in tax credits could create over 4,800 units. Those type of units vary in form, but they would most likely be rental housing in a kind of apartment format.

Human Resources committee  No, it's a tax credit to the investor, to the private equity that is put into the construction of the building. The people in the building would pay affordable rent. It's not a tax credit to the renter, it's a tax credit to the investor, a high net worth individual, for example.

Human Resources committee  There's a question on how you deliver and who you target. If you imagine the homeless population in Canada, you take a population and think about it like a pie chart. Think about an inverted triangle. At the bottom of that inverted triangle is about 15% of the overall homeless po

Status of Women committee  Thank you for this opportunity. I'm pleased to be speaking to you from the traditional territories of the people of Treaty No. 7 region in southern Alberta. The city of Calgary is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, region three. I'm here in my capacity as president and

Status of Women committee  Yes. Women in the domestic violence system can’t access the resources of the homelessness system because those systems restrict homelessness to mainstream homeless programs. These barriers are compounded by involvement in child welfare systems, racism and complex mental health a

Status of Women committee  I think it's a mistake to think about this as a homogeneous population. These are individual women with individual needs. They're often the leaders of families. What's challenging about homelessness in Canada, especially for women, is that we don't actually know.... When you look