Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’d like to follow up on my Member’s statement with questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. The pilot program in Dauphin, Manitoba, showed that the guaranteed basic income saved money in the long run through decreased costs in health care and provided better outcomes for clients. We have all the same issues as were prevalent in Dauphin, only in spades.
Given our ongoing record of failure of income support to save money, reduce health care needs, improve graduation rates and reduce unemployment rates, all things that the Dauphin five-year pilot turned around, why is our present system failing to address these same issues here in the Northwest Territories?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Minister of Education, Culture and Employment, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. My department provides income security to those individuals who are in need of subsidy, we’re not failing those people. We’re providing subsidy to those individuals. When the Member talks about Manitoba, the Mincome, in 1974 they subsidized 1,000 families with monthly cheques. At that time the federal and provincial governments collectively spent $17 million in 1974. Just imagine the cost factor today.
This is an area that my department will do what we can to provide the basic needs to those individual clients based on their needs. There has been a request for an increase in our funding, so that’s what we’re after right now. In 2007 we made substantial changes, and we’re going through another round of changes in 2015-16.
The Minister failed to address the savings and the cost benefits of that program. They did invest money, and that’s what I’m suggesting we do instead of $20 million without getting any results.
In his ’13-14 review of income assistance, the Auditor General noted that in half of the NWT files examined, client eligibility was not confirmed. In half of the files, income was not verified. In 20 percent of the files requiring Productive Choices were not committed to, and in 30 percent of the files the participation in Productive Choices were not monitored. In one-third of the files, payments made to clients were inaccurate. The system is unwieldy, inaccurate, inefficient and intrusive.
Will the Minister thoroughly explore the opportunity for these issues to be resolved through the implementation of a guaranteed basic income program instead of the current approach and report back to this House?
Obviously, if we had $20 million or $30 million today this is an area we can possibly explore, but we don’t have that kind of funding available to us to date. At the same time, as I stated earlier, we are making some changes effective April 1, 2015. We are proposing to increase our overall food benefits under income assistance programming. This is from a recommendation and also suggestions from the clientele, the general public that it’s time that we change our programming, and we’ve done that in 2007 and again in 2015 to meet the needs of those individual clients. That’s what we’re doing as a department. We provide directly to those individual clients with a subsidy that’s available to them.
I greatly appreciate that move on the part of the Minister, but what we are committing to here is an ongoing, ever-increasing subsidy, as the Minister said in his own words in response to my first question.
In 2013 the Auditor General’s report found that 90 percent of the income assistance files they reviewed did not meet one or more key system requirements. Not only is this a huge administrative cost, we are not getting value for money. The system is broken and we are no longer closer to the considerable improvements required. We have an opportunity to start from square one with a guaranteed basic income that will save money and has better outcomes, according to the research that’s been done.
Will the Minister commit to researching the feasibility of a guaranteed basic income, streamlining the system and freeing up money, freeing up money wasted on administration that could be put to better use helping the people who need it?
Our system is not broken. We still provide funding. We still provide subsidy to those Northwest Territories clientele on income security, and we will continue to do. We always make improvements as well.
Again, I have to reiterate, in 2007 we made substantial changes to our food programming and we will continue to do so. Again, in 2015 we’re going to have another increase. I’m not sure. The Member is referring to a feasibility study. These are the changes that we heard and we’re moving forward on the changes from the recommendation of the general public. We’re making changes to our policy every now and then and this is one of them.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, indeed, we will continue to pour money down this drain ad infinitum without achieving what we want to achieve as opposed to the Dauphin study which the positive benefits lasted eight years after the money stopped. What more can you say? What we are doing now has not worked for some time and shows no promise of getting better. This government needs to admit that the welfare system has no future and, more importantly, that the clients who depend on it have no future either. That’s the point that’s being made here.
When will the Minister begin to move towards a system that is proven to work: the guaranteed basic income?
We are indeed pouring money into where it’s needed. The most clientele necessity, the most basic needs we’re providing funding towards that. That is our overall goal and objective to look after those who most need it. The ones who are in poverty, we’re providing a subsidy to them. We’re making changes to our programming, as I stated. This is what we’re doing as the Department of Education, Culture and Employment responsible for the Income Security Program. This is an area that we’ve made some considerable improvement, as I stated before, but we are putting money where our mouth is to the clientele who most need it.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Ms. Bisaro.
