Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are addressed to the Premier and I’d like to follow up on my statement about the Anti-Poverty Strategy. I want to follow up on the report which went to the government last December from the workshop that was held in October.
I know that there is a GNWT working group that has been established and I also know that it does not include any representatives from outside of government, that there are no representatives from the Anti-Poverty Alliance. I know there is an advisory body but that body is not involved as part of the working group.
So I’d like to ask the Premier why, on the part of the government, why there is this reticence to involve the Anti-Poverty Alliance in developing the Anti-Poverty Strategy. Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The honourable Premier, Mr. Roland.
Well, yes, quite simply, Mr. Speaker, the issue comes when in past experience within the Government of the Northwest Territories when we have a large working group together to look at the issues within the North and there are a number of issues that we have examples of, this is one of those, the Anti-Poverty Strategy. The work they’ve done is good. It was good to get the information together from those that help deliver and deal with those issues on their own. We also, as a Government of the Northwest Territories, deal with those issues and we can’t forget that as well, and we need to collect our information, use the work that was done as part of the process.
The trouble becomes when there’s such a large working group and the recommendations that may come out of that, at times the government then is faced with the ones having to try to fund and put into practice all of those. So that’s one of the considerations.
We know that the work has been done and it will be a part of the process, because we need to do our work internally, as well, and look at how we deliver the programs from our end to ensure that we are meeting the goals that we’re intended to meet. Thank you.
Thanks to the Premier. I have to disagree. I think the original Anti-Poverty Alliance is a large group, but it’s not all of the members of the Anti-Poverty Alliance who needed to be on the government’s working group. They certainly would have been happy with a couple of representatives who were not government members.
I think the Premier also suggested that all of the recommendations from the anti-poverty report, the No Place for Poverty report, needed to be accepted by the government and that’s not true. I think if the report is read carefully, there are a couple of priorities that the report specifies.
One of the things that I need to ask the Premier is: there is currently a proposal and I think it may have already been started, but there’s a plan to go out and to do more consultation, the community consultations. Those that will be consulted will be invited to consult, it won’t be an open invitation to anybody to come. I’d like to know from the Premier why this consultation is needed. The consultation was done last fall, and why do we have to go and consult with specific community people as opposed to anybody in the NWT? Thank you.
Thank you. The work that we need to do now from a Government of the Northwest Territories side is we’re involved heavily in the field of dealing with the poverty issue in the North with quite a number of departments: the Housing Corporation; Education Culture and Employment; Health and Social Services. We’ve got quite a number of others: ITI, Justice, in some form or another. So we need to look at our end of the work that’s being done and relate that to the work that’s been done by the NGOs as well. So the work they’ve done will help inform the work that we’re going to and are doing.
I think the important piece is we’ve got to do a measurement of what we’ve done in our day-to-day service as the Government of the Northwest Territories and see how we can bring those together.
Thanks to the Premier. I certainly don’t deny that the government is heavily involved in programs to try and attack poverty. What’s necessary is a cross-departmental coordination and cooperation among departments and the silos are still evident. I also don’t deny that the government needs to do the work and there needs to be an analysis of what we are doing.
My question to the Premier had to do with the consultation that is presumably about to happen and I’d like to point out to the Premier that there were representatives of the government at that workshop, approximately 12 percent of the people in attendance. I’d like to know if the Premier, based on that information, will reconsider the consultation plan which is apparently ready to go and/or may already be gone. Take the advice of the Anti-Poverty Alliance and move forward from the report instead of doing work already done.
The work that was done by the anti-poverty group had a preliminary focus. Yes, the government was involved in the workshop at our request, but, quite simply, the fact that as the GNWT a number of departments... And yes, the reason that we include Executive, Health and Social Services, Education, Culture and Employment, ITI and Justice as part of the review of this is to knock those silos down and we have to look at the way that we’ve delivered those programs and come back and correlate that with the work that was done by the NGOs and come out with recommendations that would fit at that point going forward. We’ve committed to working with the Standing Committee on Social Programs to provide those results as we do that work.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. Final supplementary, Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Thanks to the Premier again. I didn’t, unfortunately, hear an answer to my question. I do hope that the Premier will reconsider this proposed round of consultation and change it to be more meaningful.
I’d like to know from the Premier if this working group and advisory group and whoever else may be involved will be able to give us a definition of poverty prior to September 2011.
Well, first and foremost, let’s not discount our own staff within the Government of the Northwest Territories from having a good level of input and credibility when it comes to this kind of work. It’s a mix of all services, whether it’s NGOs, but let’s not discount the work of our own people that are in the trenches, as well, day to day. I think bringing those two together can help at the end of the day and our goal is to have the work done before the end of the life of this Assembly.
Thank you, Mr. Roland. The honourable Member for Nahendeh, Mr. Menicoche.
