Question to Minister Duclos: What can Canadians expect from a national social finance strategy?

Hon. Ratna Omidvar: Thank you, minister, for being with us today. My question is about social innovation and finance, still in Canada a rather newish way of bringing private and institutional capital to deliver both a social dividend and an economic return. In your mandate letter, it is clearly stated that the government will develop a social finance strategy. You have struck a steering group to give you advice on this.

Can you update us as to what aspects of social finance and innovation the steering group is looking at? What is the timeline for it to report to you? When do you project to table your social innovation strategy?

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Families, Children and Social Development: I have the impression that my agenda is scrutinized by members of the Senate. I was meeting with the co-creation committee this morning on precisely those matters.

First, with the timeline, their work is ongoing. It is going well. It will be continued until June 2018.

Second, their agenda, from a content perspective, is very strong. The aim is to use the power of social innovation and social finance to support the work of governments in order to make dollars invested by governments generate more dollars to be invested in helping our more vulnerable Canadians and more vulnerable communities.

They’re working very hard. They know that for vulnerable Canadians, low-income Canadians, Canadians living in situations of handicaps, with mental health or physical health difficulties, those Canadians will be better helped if we master and we fully use the power of social innovation and social finance.

These are tremendously dedicated, intelligent, experienced individuals. We have 16 of them on our co-creation committee. They have been working very hard over the last few months. The problem is they all keep working even harder in the next few months so that by June 2018 we have the first ever social innovation and social finance strategy that we’ll then be able to use to leverage all of those resources, human and otherwise, which they so ably demonstrated again this morning, to be able to use for the benefit of the most vulnerable Canadians.