Mr. Speaker, I'm going to join my colleagues in speaking about income assistance. It's clear there's severe shortcomings in how the GNWT works to address poverty and inequality. As we search for solutions, I would like to turn to my colleagues' attention to the work Alternatives North has done to find missing pieces of our social safety net.
After years of tireless study and research, they have concluded that what the North is missing is a universal income program. They've even provided us with the steps we need to take to put this program in place. Rates of poverty and low income remain stubbornly high while standards of living remain stagnant, at best. The NWT Bureau of Statistics recently discovered that poverty has risen to 15 percent but the data gets even worse as it's broken down. 15 percent of single parent families in the small communities live on low incomes, and 24 percent of NWT children younger than 15 live in households that struggle to meet their financial needs. These numbers do not even begin to tell the bigger picture of the fact that many working families are living dangerously close to falling into these low income and poverty thresholds every month. The GNWT seems only interested in continually added entitlement programs but doing so only increases administrative costs and builds barriers into our system that leave our most vulnerable stuck in a poverty trap. A basic minimum income would round up programs we already have by ensuring every Northerner has a liveable wage without adding to our administrative costs.
Mr. Speaker, the previous government shrugged off this report when it was first released but this new government now has the opportunity to correct that mistake and begin working with NGOs, municipalities, Indigenous governments, and their federal counterparts to begin phasing in pilot programs across the North that will raise the standard of living in communities in the NWT.
Mr. Speaker, one pilot program would be an improvement over zero. It's time for universal basic income. It was time yesterday, it will be time tomorrow, and certainly we'll find out if it's time today. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Member from Range Lake. Members' statements. Member from Frame Lake.
