Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
WHEREAS every person has the right to a standard of living adequate to the well-being of their families and themselves;
AND WHEREAS approximately 10 percent of Canadians, or 2.9 million people, lived in poverty in 2007;
AND WHEREAS in some NWT communities, up to 50 percent of households have a total income of less than $30,000;
AND WHEREAS 40 percent of NWT households with a senior have incomes below $40,000;
AND WHEREAS health indicators, educational achievement, child apprehension rates and family violence can be directly related to poverty;
AND WHEREAS poverty is human-made and can be overcome;
AND WHEREAS the GNWT currently has no official definition of poverty and no clear and integrated strategy to combat poverty;
AND WHEREAS it should be a priority goal of the GNWT to eradicate poverty in the Northwest Territories;
AND WHEREAS eradicating poverty will significantly contribute to the achievement of all of the Legislative Assembly’s goals and priorities;
NOW THEREFORE I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Weledeh, that the government develop an Anti-Poverty Strategy for the Northwest Territories;
AND FURTHER, that the Premier initiate discussions towards this strategy in partnership with business, organizations and those living in poverty;
AND FURTHER, that the government and partners start by developing a definition of poverty;
AND FURTHER, that the Anti-Poverty Strategy identify specific, measurable targets, with clear cross-departmental mechanisms for coordination and integration of actions;
AND FURTHERMORE, that the government provide a comprehensive response to this motion within 120 days.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The motion is on the floor. The motion is in order. To the motion. The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I brought this motion to the floor of the House because I believe poverty is a huge issue in the NWT and I believe this government can do better in our efforts to eradicate poverty. We already have a number of programs and services in place, programs and services whose goal it is to assist those residents of ours who are marginalized, to reduce the level and amount of poverty in our Territory. But these many activities are not coordinated across our government system and they are not coordinated with the activities and non-government organizations and local governments.
Currently there are gaps in the services that are available to our residents. There are holes in the poverty safety net. By working together, we can close those gaps, mend those holes and accomplish so much more. A comprehensive targeted strategy to address poverty in the NWT is what is needed.
The preamble to the motion mentions some poverty statistics. About 10 percent of Canadians live in poverty. In the NWT’s smaller communities, up to 50 percent of our households have a total income of less than $30,000 per year. Too many of our people either live in poverty or very close to the edge of it, Mr. Speaker.
Right now, I think everybody should agree that poverty has an impact on our systems and on our residents. The causes and effects are well documented. Again, I quote from the motion’s preamble, “health indicators, educational achievements, child apprehension rates and family violence can be directly related to poverty.”
For the GNWT, these effects of poverty on our residents puts added stress and strain on our health system, our social service system, our justice system and our education system. If we work together to eliminate or even reduce poverty experienced by our people, the results will be positive, both by a financial perspective and a human one. But in order to achieve those results, we need a comprehensive targeted strategy to address poverty in the NWT.
There is no need to reinvent the wheel, either, Mr. Speaker. Six Canadian provinces have adopted anti-poverty strategies and two more are in the throes of doing so. There are several provincial strategies which we can use as a template for our own NWT one. I am advised that the Newfoundland and Labrador strategy in particular is one that we should look at with the view of using it as a foundation or base document for the development of our own strategy.
This motion calls for the Premier to initiate discussions to develop an NWT Anti-Poverty Strategy. But it emphasizes that any development must be done in partnership, in conjunction with business, organizations and those living in poverty. The development of a strategy without the involvement of these groups is a strategy destined to fail. So let’s not do that, please.
The motion also calls for the development of a definition of poverty, a definition that applies to the NWT. It’s something which does not exist at the moment and we can hardly initiate an attack on poverty if we don’t have a clear definition of the target of the attack.
The other element that must be part of any discussion is the identification of a tool to adequately measure poverty. Several measures exist throughout Canada but none applies particularly well to the NWT and there’s no agreed on measure of poverty that is used consistently throughout the government.
Mr. Speaker, every NWT person has the right to live well. The goals and the priorities of this 16th Legislative Assembly speak to healthy, educated people. We need to add to these goals. We need to make the eradication of poverty in the NWT a priority goal. This motion will get us started on that road, Mr. Speaker. I urge all Members of this House to support this motion which can only benefit our residents. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. I’ll go to the seconder to the motion, the honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I would like to stress the comments, many of the comments of my colleague Ms. Bisaro. She’s laid it out quite thoroughly there.
Basically we are at the point where we need to define in order to measure and then go out and measure poverty. I think somebody said at one of our get-togethers that if we don’t measure something, we don’t care about it. I am afraid that encapsulates some of the aspects of the issue we are dealing with through this to get an Anti-Poverty Strategy in the books.
The historical patterns and the development of poverty, of course, are familiar to many. It involves colonization, cultural upheaval, residential schools and so on. We know that many of our communities have suppressed economies. We need healthy, vigorous economies. That’s one of the aspects of dealing with poverty.
Some of these events have been portrayed in the last couple of days and can lead to a downward spiral into poverty unless we have a comprehensive strategy in place to catch those things when they happen. This government, I believe, is developing a lot of experience in that itself.
The boom/bust development scenarios that we have experienced and seem to persist on seeking often creates the devise of those that have and those that don’t. That tends to exacerbate poverty in our communities. Those in poverty face many barriers: access to child care, which we’ve heard much about recently; housing; fuel and food costs; addictions and mental health issues and the linkages that work between those. Income security, we have a lot of good things in place, but they are not linked together in ways which capture things, so there are big gaps in between. Income security does not keep pace, for example, with rising costs. We do adjust it from time to time, but it’s not very sensitive and we know there is an extremely high cost of living today.
Developing a poverty eradication plan must be based on a foundation that ensures a more equitable distribution of benefits through the vision of socially, environmentally and economically sustainable development. We are also talking a lot about that these days.
So I see the opportunities here, Mr. Speaker, as huge. I don’t see this being a huge budget item because I think we are spending a lot, but because we don’t have a comprehensive and integrated approach, we have gaps, a lot of our folks are falling through that. If we start measuring the incidents of poverty, so we actually know how we are doing and evaluating the work that we’re doing and thus learning and using an adaptive management approach to this, we can do a lot of catch up.
So, Mr. Speaker, I obviously will be supporting this motion and I urge all Members to do so. Mahsi
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Yellowknife Centre, Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I just wanted to say I will be voting in favour of this particular motion. I support any efforts to move this issue forward. Poverty is certainly a demeaning situation where people are struggling everyday to get out of it and we have to find ways to assist in the breaking of the cycle that is meaningful and productive. Mr. Speaker, I don’t think anybody in an impoverished situation dreams that dream. This is something this government needs to commit to with a focus of saying how can we help people to break the cycle, get up on their own two feet, and celebrate the opportunities that lay before this land of the Northwest Territories.
In closing, I just want to emphasize that I do support this and I think that if we can help break that tailspin that people are in, I hope very dearly that we can provide them every opportunity that all these families deserve who are stuck in this cycle.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I rise in support of this motion here today. I believe that in our small and remote communities we do have poverty issues and overcrowding issues in our housing. However, I believe that the direction that this motion gives is to have a consolidated plan for our government and that our communities with grassroots ideas and organizations that they can work with government to better help their communities. I think that we’re going in the right direction with this motion.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I, too, will be supporting the motion. I, for one, feel, as I’ve stated many times in this House, that a government is measured by how it treats its most vulnerable in our society. What we’re seeing statistically and looking at the results of what poverty does, just look out in our large cities with regard to homelessness, people having to go to food banks, people having to go to relatives’ homes and sleeping on their couch because they have nowhere else to go, visiting each other so you can share the food that you have with a family member, or in some cases having the whole family living under one roof because they cannot afford to be in social housing or to strive on their own. They need the support of each other.
Poverty is alive and well in the Northwest Territories, yet as a government we continue to spend millions of dollars for big corporations, the diamond companies, to develop infrastructure which should be paid for by the private sector regardless whether it’s office space. I for one feel that we as a government have to do a better job to deal with the poverty-related issues which are confronting us every day, whether it’s walking down the streets of Yellowknife or Inuvik or our home communities. We see these people come into the band office, or my office as it’s in the same building in Fort McPherson. There are 20 or 30 of them there for the lunch program because that’s probably the only good meal they’re going to get for the whole day. It’s sad to see, but that’s the reality of what we’re seeing in our communities.
With that I will be supporting this motion.
Thank you, Mr. Krutko. The honourable Member for Nunakput, Mr. Jacobson.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I will be supporting my colleagues Ms. Bisaro and Mr. Bromley on this motion, because of the poverty situation that exists in Nunakput already and all of the Northwest Territories. Communities, like Mr. Krutko said, he said it all regarding the way things are happening in the communities. We have people with no jobs; there’s no work going on. You never, ever heard of a food bank in the communities, but now they’re coming up to the community of Tuk. They’ve started a food bank and that was not heard of. Rich to resources and now it’s time we all step up to the plate and help our people that need help. If we put enough effort into this like we do with our diamond mines and oil and gas companies, we can do the same thing with our people to help them.
Thank you, Mr. Jacobson. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Members for bringing this forward as we dealt with some questions in the House yesterday around the anti-poverty issue in the Northwest Territories. The Members have followed up with this motion. We as the Government of the Northwest Territories are doing what we can in the way we have been and realize there is room for improvement in building and working with our partners across the North. There are significant areas that we do invest in as the Government of the Northwest Territories, and Member Bromley pointed out that while we do expend a significant amount of money in the areas of coordination and working with our partners is vital as we go forward. As I stated in questions and responses yesterday in this House around this issue, we’re looking forward to working with our partners across the Northwest Territories to strengthen our systems in an environment where our resources are stretched. So the more partners in helping this issue, the better for us across the Northwest Territories. As this motion is a direction to us, we will be abstaining from the vote.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. I will allow the mover of the motion some closing comments. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to first of all thank my colleagues for their comments and their support. I think it’s been well stated, the issue at hand.
I think it’s important to note that this motion particularly requests that a dialogue gets started, that we start talking and also that we start talking to our non-government organization partners, to our businesses, and to those that are living in poverty. There’s an opportunity for efficiencies to be gained here from talking to everybody in one place.
I hear the Premier state that this is direction to the government, but I think it’s really only direction to the Premier. It does state the Premier initiate discussions. I would ask the Premier, if he wants to abstain that’s fine, but I’d encourage the rest of Cabinet to vote.
I would ask for a recorded vote.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Member is requesting a recorded vote. All those in favour of the motion, please stand.
Recorded Vote
Ms. Bisaro, Mr. Krutko, Mr. Bromley, Mr. Menicoche, Mr. Ramsay, Mrs. Groenewegen, Mr. Beaulieu, Mr. Hawkins, Mr. Jacobson.
All those opposing the motion, please stand. All those abstaining, please stand.
Mr. Lafferty; Ms. Lee; Mr. Miltenberger; Mr. Roland; Mr. McLeod, Deh Cho; Mr. McLeod, Inuvik Twin Lakes.
Results of the recorded vote: for, nine; against, zero; abstaining, six.
---Carried
The honourable Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
