Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. Today I’d like to discuss child poverty and its effect on learning. We know that children are less resilient than adults when their basic needs aren’t met. We know that to thrive and learn, they need nutritious food, a safe place to sleep, loving relationships and stimulating learning opportunities.
Poverty forces people to eat bad food and live in substandard homes. It breeds toxic stress, shame and discouragement. Parents living in poverty are perpetually forced to make trade-offs: pay the rent this month or feed the kids, replace the kids’ outgrown winter clothes or take them to the dentist; buy storybooks or pay for prescriptions at the drugstore.
Canada’s child poverty rate is appallingly high. In a recent report of the OECD countries, Canada ranked 15th out of 17. Even worse is the rate of poverty among Aboriginal Canadians. While Canada officially ranks an impressive fourth on the UN Human Development Index, the indicators of poverty among Aboriginal peoples put Canada in 78th place, the spot previously held by Peru.
To be sure, poverty in the NWT is concentrated in small communities where the vast majority of residents are Aboriginal. The evidence tells us that poverty puts children at greater risk of developmental delays. Contributing factors include poor nutrition, vitamin deficiency in the mother, and toxic exposure to things like mould and poor housing. Another factor is that children in low-income families have less interaction with primary caregivers. Taken together, these factors make for a tougher time in school. Indeed, the indicators of school achievement in the small NWT communities are dismal and telling.
The government’s major initiatives – the Anti-Poverty Strategy, the Early Childhood Development Action Plan and the Education Renewal – appear to be taking things in a promising direction, but more needs to be done. The future of our territory is at stake.
I call on the government to make deeper changes so that by the end of the 17th Assembly we’ll be able to say we gave our young people in the communities a substantially better chance in school and beyond. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
