Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We need to compliment the Premier’s action towards an Anti-Poverty Strategy in a comprehensive and inclusive way. I attended the recent two-day No Place for Poverty Summit, working with 80 participants from 20 communities, municipal and territorial governments, service providers and the NWT’s foremost social justice advocates. I could not have been more impressed with the quality and breadth of participation and with the resulting unanimous recommendations.
Lessons shared at the workshop gave solid advice towards achieving best results. We learned that the most successful provincial efforts to develop anti-poverty strategies were those launched with the broadest participation of essential partners: government, business, civil society, and those in poverty. Most critically, bring together everyone to create buy-in and a common vision of the work ahead.
The workshop’s concluding messages were clear and I’ll repeat them here.
Eliminating poverty must be of the highest priority and the solutions must come from the community level, with full participation and inclusion. The Premier has created an internal steering committee to work with a small selection of advocates towards a framework.
Government will indeed need internal coordination and I am glad to hear that work is underway. Yet it’s clear from recent statements that the Premier will need to consider the summit conclusions and plan for an arm’s-length steering committee involved from the start for real success.
The other essential half of the fully cooperative process is ensuring that all those who come forward have a place in the first steps of design and that they have the resources they need to continue the process as full partners. As a government, we must ensure all partners are involved and that the coordination role is clearly recognized and funded by us to fuel their capacity.
An important and essential element recognized at the summit is business participation. Elimination of poverty will unleash the huge potential of citizens finally enabled to take part in building a prosperous economy both as consumers and as workers. Provincial lessons emphasize that the business community has the will and the inspiration to help this work succeed. We must ensure business is at the table.
I’ll be asking the Premier questions today on how to ensure we develop the best Anti-Poverty Strategy in Canada.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The honourable Member for Mackenzie Delta, Mr. Krutko.
