Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions today are directed to the Minister for the social envelope committee, Mr. Abernethy. Late last year a draft Anti-Poverty Strategy was released. There has been review and comment on that document from organizations, and I understand public feedback was formally collected through a survey, some focus groups and even street interviews. Could the Minister update us on the current status of the Anti-Poverty Strategy, and when we can expect to see a new draft and when the completed strategy will be coming to this House?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Minister of Justice, Mr. Abernethy.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Member is correct; a draft came out in December. It was a rough draft and we’ve taken it out for public consultation and discussion, and we’re seeking feedback and input on that. Much of that has now come in.
On behalf of the steering committee, we’ve got a team of dedicated staff who are actually finalizing a draft. We will have the final product out on March 31st. We will have a draft done before that which, hopefully, we’ll have an opportunity to share and discuss with committee and other stakeholders.
I guess the draft should be coming out very soon, obviously, if the final is expected by the end of the month. This time frame stretches us, I would say, based on that, into the spring, and yes, we want to get it right to have a strategy that public groups can support and be ready to resource the strategy adequately.
The budget address noted that funding for a strategy would be brought forward as a supp before the next main budget, which is good news. Since we’re gathering comment on the final draft strategy now, will the Minister commit to contracting peer review from outside experts so that we can get the benefit of experienced input from those familiar with other jurisdictions’ efforts and ensure our strategy is the best it can be?
The first step is to get the foundation document done, which will be March 31st. That will be available for public distribution at that point. The second step is with the steering committee that’s been established that includes members from the Anti-Poverty Coalition as well as Aboriginal governments and other organizations. We’re going to continue to work with them and our working group to actually pull together a response to the framework which will be our action plan which will identify what things the government and other groups need to do to fight and combat poverty here in the Northwest Territories.
As the Minister of Finance indicated, we expect there to be some financial implications of that but we don’t know what those are yet and it’s too early to assume what the working group and steering committee are going to come up with. Once that’s done, we’ll be coming back to the House for some further discussion on what we need to fund in that area.
As far as a peer review, we are but a partner in this project. We are working with NGOs and different organizations, and we are relying on the steering committee for a significant amount of direction on moving forward. If they are interested in peer review, it is something that we would certainly be interested in talking about, but we do have a desire to get this out as quickly as we can. We have done a significant amount of research with our partners and they will be involved throughout the whole process. They are the stakeholders out there who are dealing with people on a day-to-day basis. I’m not 100 percent sure that a peer review is going to be 100 percent necessary, but we look to the steering committee for some advice.
Thanks to the Minister’s comments. I’d say that’s being a responsible partner, being willing to discuss that idea. There are a number of strategies out there, as the Minister knows, that are very successful and others that are not. We’d prefer to be in the former category. We know this strategy needs to be not only an action plan for integrated cross-government action to reduce the alarming poverty and growing inequity in NWT society. It also needs to fully involve Aboriginal government partners and the business community. I know the Minister has a particular interest there. The need to raise the awareness of society at large, the benefits of reducing poverty is clear.
How will the Minister enhance the energetic participation of Aboriginal governments and business partners, and how does he intend to sell the benefits of poverty reduction as the strategy moves to being released?
The Member is right; that is pretty much exactly what we’re going for, which is why we’ve engaged a steering committee that does have Aboriginal government representation as well as NGO engagement. We have been, and I have personally been, sending letters to the different Aboriginal governments and organizations of the Northwest Territories seeking additional input. We had Aboriginal governments involved in the working groups as well. I will continue to do that. We know that is critical. We know we have to engage all of our partners.
With respect to industry, our steering committee does have a member of the NWT Chamber on it and I have had a discussion with him personally, indicating how important this is to us and how important it is that we have business engaged. We maybe haven’t had as much engagement from business and industry as we have hoped, but we will continue to push and I will continue to talk to industry representatives and Aboriginal government representatives at every opportunity. We are developing a comprehensive communications plan which we will use to get more of that information out and seek input, and the next step is still coming, the development of an action plan which we plan to engage all of our partners on.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. Final supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Just a comment. I found in these sorts of things that local businesses are the ones that are the real workhorses in this area of social responsibility. Keeping all departments coordinated in the development of the strategy has been a major challenge.
Will the Minister build in the creation of a funded secretariat to introduce the strategy, guide its integration into our programming, and do the evaluations we’ll need for continued improvement, working with our partners, of course?
The government will have a continued involvement in the implementation of any action items that come out of the foundation. I won’t commit to a secretariat, but I will commit that the government will maintain being actively engaged. We will work with our partners as we move forward and we’ll continue to monitor the results. Without seeing the final plan, it’s a little hard to say exactly how that’s done. We expect some recommendations on how to monitor it and move forward with it to actually come from the steering committee as part of the action plan.
Thank you, Mr. Abernethy. The honourable Member for Deh Cho, Mr. Nadli.
