Julie Green

Of course, the Minister knows that income assistance is a last resort. The criteria for receiving income assistance is that you have used every one of your resources, including your savings, selling your house, selling your car, that you have nothing left. That's the premise for applying for income assistance. So I want to ask, again, whether the Minister will ensure that this promise to increase food levels will, in fact, be part of this government's agenda as well?

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, my questions are for the Minister of ECE. No, sorry. I have two sets of questions. I am on the wrong one. Heads up. My questions are for the Minister of Transportation. Just kidding. My questions are for the Minister of Education, Culture, and Employment. Is the Minister prepared to continue to stick to the promise made by the previous Finance Minister and continue catching up food allowances for income assistance recipients so that they are up to 2014 levels? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'll look forward to that confirmation from the Minister. Finally, I'm going to repeat the question that commentators and frontline service providers as well as I have been asking: will the Minister recognize that taking away the food and clothing allowance for children under 18 was the wrong thing to do and to reinstate that allowance immediately? Mahsi, Mr. Speaker.

I'm wondering if the Minister can tell us if this issue can be addressed by paying food and clothing allowances until the Canada Child Benefit is available?

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the Minister's answer. But if the funds were sufficient, why would we have food banks? Why would we have soup kitchens? Why would we have all these organizations, not only here in Yellowknife but in Hay River and Inuvik, and even in smaller places like Tuktoyaktuk that give food to people every single day? Food security is a huge issue in the Northwest Territories, and I would like the Minister's commitment that he's going to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. Thank you.

While the Minister is chatting with the Finance Minister about whether to uphold that promise from last year, I would just urge him to consider that every other per diem and allowance that any of us receive who are associated with the government rises over time, and that the price of food isn't going down. So I wonder if he could give me a rationale for not continuing to raise the level of income assistance for food?

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, during this sitting of the Legislative Assembly, we've been debating changes to the NWT Income Assistance Program. We have learned that the new Canada Child Benefit no longer counts as income for people receiving income assistance. We've also learned that the department that administers income assistance has taken this opportunity to end the food and clothing allowances for children under 18.

Mr. Speaker, the effect of this change is two-fold. First, Ottawa is now paying for food, clothing and other necessities for children on income assistance through the...

Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it was 100 years ago this year that women got the right to vote. Women in Alberta were the first to be enfranchised and voters there elected the first female MLA, Louise McKinney, in 1917. Suffrage spread slowly across Canada, with women in Quebec getting the vote in 1940 and Aboriginal women along with men as well in 1960. Women slowly entered political life and in small numbers, and today we are still well short of parity.

A quarter of members of Parliament are women, and here in the NWT, as you know, there are just the two of us. This Assembly has committed...

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and I thank the Minister for making that commitment to remove the requirement for a statutory declaration from some kind of health professional in order for people to change their designation. I appreciate that the situation with minors is a little trickier because they're vulnerable people just by nature of their age, and I look forward to his further information on that pending his research. So my thanks to him and his officials, and my thanks as well to the Rainbow Coalition, Coleen Canney and Teale MacIntosh who made this original presentation to us on...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, today my remarks are specifically about the amendment with the designation 42(1). Do you want to hear those comments now?