Certainly. Thank you for the question.

I'll start with an anecdote that benchmarking and applying market logic or market rationale to social services can often put the client in a position they shouldn't be in. I was going to bring up, but you already brought it up, that we are very concerned about operating through a market- or a profit-focused lens as opposed to a client-focused lens.

One of my former supervisors said they've really had to cut back the fat at their job. She was working at mental health and addictions in New Brunswick, and was operating under new benchmarking systems that are really quite profit and fiscally driven. She was going from a system where she could holistically understand her clients, be around them in the community, and know when someone needed to come in twice in a week or know that she needed to see this person for 45 minutes instead of half an hour. When she was moved over to a system where being observed from the outside or from 36,000 feet, as Mr. Cuzner put it, it would look as though they were being quite successful, because she was seeing way more clients in a day in 30-minute intervals than she was before, but to her and her observation of the community it was not as successful.

In terms of creating those benchmarks you have to engage with the people who are being served, get that lived experience perspective as well as ask the front-line workers what those benchmarks should be, which is why we're so concerned about implementing even more of a market rationale into the provision of social services.

I won't go too long, but one of my colleagues put the social impact bonds in the example of payday loans. They might be exactly what you need up front; they might be that godsend, but then you get into that cycle of poverty. What saves you after you pay off that payday loan? You still don't have that job. You don't have that sustainable architecture around you to help prevent you from getting into the same position where you needed a payday loan in the first place.

We don't want the Government of Canada to get into a similar cycle where they're paying into these payday loans, taking out a loan, and then someone pulls out and they're left to pick up the pieces or to put into place again what had been put in or financed through a private corporation.

I hope that answers your question a little.

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