Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Item 17, motions. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

WHEREAS the 16th Legislative Assembly passed a

motion for the development of an Anti-Poverty Strategy;

AND WHEREAS work toward a clear and integrated strategy to combat poverty was undertaken during the 16th Assembly but was not

completed;

AND WHEREAS every person has the right to a standard of living adequate to the well-being of their families and themselves;

AND WHEREAS in 2009, 16.7 percent of NWT families had a total income of less than $30,000;

AND WHEREAS health indicators, educational achievement, child apprehension rates and family violence can be directly related to poverty;

AND WHEREAS poverty is human made and can be overcome;

AND WHEREAS it should be a goal of the GNWT to eradicate poverty in the Northwest Territories;

AND WHEREAS eradicating poverty will significantly contribute to the achievement of all of the Legislative Assembly’s goals and priorities;

NOW THEREFORE I MOVE, seconded by the honourable Member for Sahtu, that the Government of the Northwest Territories work with business, organizations and those living in poverty to complete an Anti-Poverty Strategy for the Northwest Territories;

AND FURTHER, that the Anti-Poverty Strategy identify specific measureable targets, with clear cross-departmental mechanisms for coordination and integration of actions;

AND FURTHERMORE, that the government provide a comprehensive response to this motion within 120 days.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The motion is in order. To the motion. Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I bring this motion forward because I feel that there is a need to reaffirm the passage of the motion from the 16th Assembly. I feel that this Assembly needs to indicate their support for their belief in the development of an Anti-Poverty Strategy so I am bringing this motion forward basically in that regard.

I want to provide some comments. First of all the National Council of Welfare first examined the cost of poverty almost a decade ago. What they found was that poverty does have high costs for all Canadians. That certainly is true for us here in the NWT. That high cost is not attached to those just living in poverty but it is attached to everybody.

Alternatives North in 2009 produced a report. I would like to quote from that report. “There has never been a more important time for the government to develop a poverty reduction strategy to improve the living conditions and well-being of low income Northerners. These efforts need to be located within a larger vision and framework for social development, one that is tied to an equitable and sustainable vision of economic progress. Economic growth alone cannot accomplish this task, as evidence from the last decade amply demonstrates. Rather, a comprehensive approach to poverty reduction is needed, one that brings together community governments, employers and

citizens to ensure that all share in the potential and the promise of the NWT.” That is from Jeffery Wilson from an Alternatives North report on Poverty Reduction Policies and Programs in the NWT.

The impact of poverty and low income is seen across Canada, but there are a number of variables that are unique to the North. I don’t think that is any secret for anybody in this room. They affect the depth and the experience of poverty in our NWT communities. I would like to mention a couple of them. High cost of food, shelter and fuel in the North and the decreasing reliance on traditional ways of life and the mixed economy, especially in regard to food supply, influences poverty. The development of non-renewable resources has fostered inequality in the distribution of wealth and economic opportunities between genders, as men typically have benefitted disproportionately from the vast majority of jobs in mining and the industrial sectors. There has been an increase in housing prices and rent which contributes to housing insecurity among those who don’t benefit from the boom times, and decades of policies of colonization and assimilation have created dependencies, poverty, apathy and lack of encouragement to work on homelessness and loss of self-esteem. Again, this is not news to anybody in this room.

These factors create large disparities from community to community and also among people within communities, and I mean all NWT communities. Poverty has an economic cost to our government, and some of those are expenditures on health care to remedy poorer health associated with poverty. A family that can’t afford prescription medicine for a sick child will likely end up in a hospital at an emergency room. That’s far more costly than keeping the child at home and/or keeping them healthy.

Poor nutrition and high stress can lead to diabetes, heart disease and other illnesses. Twenty percent of health care spending in Canada can be attributed to socioeconomic factors such as income-related disparities. So it costs us when we don’t have healthy people, and we certainly have a high number of unhealthy people within the NWT and an Anti-Poverty Strategy will address that.

Another cost to government is the additional cost of crime and we’ve talked about that through Bill C-10. Across the NWT in 2010 there were over 22,000 incidences reported, criminal incidences. Another cost to the government is foregone tax revenues. Millions of dollars in personal income and tax revenue would be added to our economy if adults facing a high risk of poverty had the same likelihood of employment and the same average income as other Canadians.

Lastly, there’s the tragedy of losing out on potential and talent. The health problems of an impoverished child, for instance, can hinder their learning and,

therefore, their employment later in life. We lose a lot of potential if we don’t have healthy children and children who are able to go to school and become educated.

So what does poverty cost? Well, in BC poverty represents a direct cost to the government of $2.2 billion to $2.3 billion annually. That’s about 6 percent of their provincial budget. In PEI the total cost of poverty is $315 million on an annual basis. In the NWT we don’t have a clear definition of poverty and it’s a very difficult one to produce, so it’s very hard for us to work out the total costs. But I can tell you that about $15 million of our budget goes only towards income support, and if you add in the staff costs for income support it bumps it up to about $26 million. But we have to consider all of the subsidies that we give to people in the NWT. That $15 million or $26 million does not include housing, it does not include all the subsidies that we have, for instance, for fuel subsidies for our seniors. So there are absolutely any number of subsidies across any number of departments in the GNWT that we have not yet accounted for. BC and PEI have done that and they can give a total amount of money. I can’t do that because we haven’t done that work.

Initially, to put an Anti-Poverty Strategy or to develop an Anti-Poverty Act and put it into place will cost a small amount of money. But I’ve said this several times before and I will say it again: there will be an initial upfront minimal cost, but the amount of money that we have in providing programs and services that try to deal with poverty and try to support our people that we have an adequate amount of money. We spend huge dollars on our people relative to income support, relative to poverty, relative to education, et cetera. We just need to take that money and use it more efficiently. We need to coordinate it across departments. We need to make sure that we have policies that don’t contravene each other. Looking at an Anti-Poverty Strategy, if it’s comprehensive, if it involves all departments, if it involves the general public, if it involves NGOs who do the work as well, and if it involves people who actually are impoverished, we will get a strategy that will give us a more efficient and, I would say, a more caring government. We can invest in childhood development, literacy, numeracy and higher education.

Last, but not least, I want to say that research has shown that if we invest in poverty, it generates positive results for us. I’d like to quote another quote from Alternatives North from Ms. Aggie Brockman, who I believe is still up there listening: “Our society and economy cannot prosper unless the negative costs of dealing with poverty are exchanged for the positive costs of human development. Other jurisdictions are defeating poverty using Anti-Poverty Strategies. We can do it too.” It can’t be said better.

Poverty reduction plans do work and not doing anything about poverty will cost and is costing us all. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. Who’s a seconder? Mr. Yakeleya, Member for Sahtu.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to thank my colleague Ms. Bisaro for bringing this motion to the committee level and receiving support to it today where we had a theme on anti-poverty and I was very happy to offer my support to second her motion.

This is a very important piece of work that is not yet completed by some very dedicated people in the Northwest Territories that see that this is a doable thing within the life of this government or within the Northwest Territories and more so raise the issue of the poverty situation in our communities in the Northwest Territories.

Ms. Bisaro touched on some of the factors that could be causing this issue to take forefront and what things we need to do to resolve them. Ms. Bisaro also talked about the dependency, how we now tend to lean on governments for everything. That has caused poor people. It costs people to stay poor because of the policies that are not quite fitting the needs of the people. I know for sure that people want to make a contribution to their community, to their family and to the Northwest Territories. They want to do things that would be appreciated by the community. Sometimes it’s very difficult to help when there are roadblocks and barriers and red tape from allowing them to do it. It stifles their spirit and creativity, their spontaneity, and they just say, oh well, just like nobody is listening.

I raise this point because, like I said in my Member’s statement, growing up in Tulita we did not have a definition, we did not know what poor was. The only way we found out if we were poor is that when you looked at the outsiders coming in to teach us, to police us, to look after our health, that these people had running water and flush toilets and electricity in their house, while we had gas lamps and slop pails or honey buckets and we hauled our own water and we made our own fire. We didn’t have a furnace. So we were trying to figure out, well what’s going on here. We didn’t know any better, but on those types of standards when you talk to the older people like my grandmother and Chief Albert Wright who signed the treaty in 1921, we were considered pretty well off living in a house, having gas lamps, having woodstoves compared to how they lived in the bush. We would look up and say, oh, you guys were poor, you had some hard times and the way you travelled.

So through the period of different changes in the lifestyles, now we’re the generation where a lot of our young people in Tulita know they want to do

well. I spoke with them through the election; I spoke to them after the election; and I know they want to make a contribution. They did not get up one day at 15 or 16 years old and say, well, I’m going to be a burden on government the rest of my life. These children, like Colville Lake students, Tulita students, when we went to visit in schools, want to become doctors, engineers, Ministers, MLAs, chiefs. They want to aspire to something that will be beneficial not only to them but to their community.

Somehow we have created this dependency as much as we’re depending on the federal government for our funding. We’re beggars to the federal government and this land is so rich.

When I look back now at my grandmother, they were rich in their culture, in their spirituality and their belief and they held a family close together. They were rich as a family. They weren’t poor, but if we look at them from an economic, materialistic way, we say, yes, they were poor. They were poor because they lived on the land. They made brush from the trees for their floor. They hunted and they trapped.

Today my elders say we are poor. We have houses. I can pick up the phone and the government’s going to deliver water for me. I don’t even have to walk down anymore to get water. If I can pick up the phone, the government isn’t going to let me starve. You’re going to feed me, but you’re only going to give me this much.

Our prices in Tulita are almost double what the prices in Yellowknife are. In Deline it’s $50 for a can of powdered milk for the babies. Our currency in the Sahtu is lower than Yellowknife. Like I said before, you put $50 on the table, you go to OK Economy, you know what kind of groceries you can get. You know what kind of change. If you do that in Tulita you know darn well you’ll only get a few cents left in your pocket. The value of our currency has depreciated as you go further north.

Mr. Premier also made reference to what it could cost to live in Sachs Harbour: $93,000 just to get by. That’s crazy. We do not have to continue this way of thinking that we’re poor. We’re very rich. Just as Ottawa sees us as the poor territory, we’re dependent on them. We beg them for money, to lend us a little more so that we can do some projects. Increase our borrowing. Give us more money. Give us more responsibility with money so we can do devolution programs. We’re beggars in our own land. Our people are beggars in their own community amongst their own people.

This Anti-Poverty Strategy is something that we should be looking at and we should support the people. I know a lot of people in Deline support that. They do not want to be beggars because kids follow the role models. If the parents are that way, make sure the prediction is that the kids will do the same thing. They’re going to ask for the same

thing. I want to say that, because when I look at the stats of the profile of the Sahtu, the anti-poverty and the way we look at poverty is based on the economic measurements.

To correlate, the percentage of employment is 44 percent. Norman Wells is 80 percent. Look at the communities that are the most busy with economic activities, the highest employment rate. The communities with no employment, like Deline at 42 percent. The housing problems in Colville Lake, percentage – this is on percentage – the problems of housing in Colville Lake is 97 percent.

I met a young mother, two children, two jobs, living in a log house with holes between the logs, no running water, no bath or shower, no indoor flush toilets. She’s trying hard. I encouraged her, and I support her, and she’s trying hard to make ends meet. I understand that is poor. That’s unacceptable. It’s so cold in there when I went there that there’s frost under her kitchen table. You know what? I admire that young lady because she reminds me of my mother when my mother was bringing us up. Those things that we’re measuring in poverty, she’s in poverty right now. Same with the lady in Deline who is living in a shack.

Housing problems in Norman Wells are only 25 percent. Tulita 49 percent.

The income in the Sahtu for 2006 was $46,000, but the smaller communities are much lower. In Fort Good Hope the income was $29,000; Deline, $31,000; Tulita, $33,000; and Norman Wells, $67,000. This shows that the average person in smaller communities is living in poverty. In the Sahtu 19.7 percent of people had total incomes of less than $10,000 a year. In the Sahtu 56.6 percent of the people had total incomes of less than $35,000 a year. It’s also that the majority of people are living in poverty. That’s the conclusion.

Poverty is also related to education. Like I said, in the olden days we were very well educated on the land. It will be unbelievable today if you take any one of us who wasn’t raised or living on the land and to go out and expect you to live on the land. You would be poor. You would starve to death. You would ask for Dene social income assistance to help you live off the land. We would never, ever accept or allow anybody to live on the land without knowing anything. So our education system was rich and wealthy, because it made us independent.

Somehow, like Ms. Bisaro said, we’ve become dependent. People feed us and educate us and we move into the economic lifestyle of the world.

The education in Colville Lake, the high school graduation rate is 28 percent. The Northwest Territories average is 70 percent. In Deline the average is 46 percent. Fort Good Hope is 40 percent. Norman Wells, again, is 82 percent. You see how the economic activity flows around where

there’s lots of business and how the poverty is decreased while the other communities don’t have much activity and the poverty is more of an issue there. Tulita has 48 percent. It’s well known that low education levels are linked to unemployment and poverty.

We ask, through this motion, that some serious consideration be put to how we change people’s thinking that they’re not poor, that they’re rich, and the government needs to look at how we create that interdependency and no longer be dependent on government.

People can and will make it. There’s more than enough in this world to share. Just as you go onto the land, there’s lots and lots of food to eat there. The young people today in Tulita are so used to the government’s dependency that it’s a shame we have come that far from once being a proud and strong people. Hopefully with the group of this hardworking people we can help us all to learn how to live independently and be wealthy. This issue for sure one day can be eradicated in the Northwest Territories.

I thank Ms. Bisaro for bringing this motion up and having us debate on it.

Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Colleagues, before we move on I’d like to welcome Ms. Marianne Bromley into the House, Mr. Bromley’s wife. Welcome to the House. To the motion. The Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise to speak in support of the motion before us today. I want to start by just noting that a revved up and healthy economy does not equate directly to reducing poverty unless there is a clear strategy in place to ensure that benefits and opportunities trickle through to all people that need it. Again, we can have a revved up economy, we have had a revved up economy, and yet we are still struggling with these issues.

We are looking today for a clear commitment to put together a strategy to address that. The income gap is growing. The disparity is growing steadily and will only continue to worsen again unless we develop explicit measures in such as a document as the strategy and implement those to address that.

We’re not alone in this, by the way. Just about every jurisdiction around the world is struggling with this. I’m not saying we’re the only ones here, but we are part of the… This is a challenge that many have and we need to address it and show some leadership.

We are able to take advantage, in this case, of lessons learned and mistakes that have been experienced from other jurisdictions. Ms. Bisaro mentioned a couple of those. There are a number of them in Canada and the successful ones are

really standing out. I don’t see us taking advantage of these lessons learned. We need to do that.

The comprehensive Anti-Poverty Strategy needs to be developed by a real cross-section of society and overseen by the same. With that, it has some real promise. Again, I don’t see that happening very well yet, so we need some clarity on that and we need to put that in place.

A most recent example of jurisdictions that I’m aware of who have been successful versus those that haven’t is the situation contrasting Ontario with Alberta. During the recession in ’08 and ’09 here, Ontario, which did have a comprehensive Anti-Poverty Strategy in place, actually decreased the number of people living in poverty. Whereas Alberta, as we know, one of the richest, possibly the richest province in Canada, experienced a significant increase in the number of people living in poverty. A stark example there that we should pay heed to.

We do not have to spend a lot, is my belief, in putting together and implementing a poverty strategy, but we do need to ensure the participation of this cross-section of society, including the NWT Coalition that has already done such good work.

We heard from the Premier today, I believe, a figure of $185 million we’re spending. To me, this is an opportunity. If we’re spending that much, surely a good, effective strategy put in place should be able to reduce that figure and so the savings indicate that this was a very reasonable investment.

Probably our biggest challenge and opportunity here is to capture and resolve the cross-departmental issues that people in poverty experience and that a number of Members have mentioned today. This is something that I’ve tried to harp on a lot, and I know others have because we hear about this from people who actually experience it day to day.

I’m in full support of this. I appreciate the Members that are bringing this forward, and basically I just want to say let’s get it done. Mahsi.

Thank you, Mr. Bromley. To the motion. The Member for Inuvik Boot Lake, Mr. Moses.

Thank you, Mr. Moses. To the motion. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am definitely in favour of this motion today regarding anti-poverty. It is obviously a very tricky subject. Obviously you have heard today a lot of supporting views from very different angles. I would like to attack this from a more pragmatic angle, an economic angle.

If I was to use the analogy of what we do here today as an automobile, as a government we tend to focus a lot of our efforts on tweaking with our engine, making our engine strong. That is not a bad thing, Mr. Speaker. That is not a bad thing for the Members to work on. But keep in mind if we were to use the analogy again of a vehicle, then poverty

would be our flat tires. This is what we have to deal with, Mr. Speaker and Members, is that we have flat tires.

Industry and research has told us that if we were to look at our flat tires, if we were to fix these flat tires, the return on our investment as a government would be anywhere between four to 15 dollars for every dollar we spend on fixing our flat tires. These are numbers that are factual in print. If we were to take the time and to look at fixing these tires, to get four to 15 times on our dollar I think it is a great amount of help for our economy because it takes those stresses away from things like social programs, health, incarcerations. If we have flat tires, Mr. Speaker and Members of this Assembly, then we need to take it to a good garage. To take it to a good garage we need to take it to good mechanics. Some of our great mechanics are sitting with us today. These mechanics are hoping and waiting to fix our flat tires. I support the motion of anti-poverty. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. To the motion. The honourable Premier, Mr. Bob McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Taking action to improve the well-being of Northerners and reduce poverty in the Northwest Territories is a continuing priority for the Government of the Northwest Territories, although it is not something this government can do alone.

Earlier this year an interdepartmental team consulted residents about the root causes of poverty. Residents told us that the root causes of poverty included lack of wellness, lack of education and skills, housing challenges, lack of employment, high cost of living, and programs that create dependency instead of encouraging independence. In setting our priorities as a Caucus, we recognize that action, not more studies, are needed. That is why we identified concrete actions like addressing housing needs, strengthening and diversifying our economy and increasing employment opportunities where they are most needed as our collective priorities.

To effectively address poverty, we will all need to work together; individuals, families and communities, different levels of government and volunteer and community organizations. We all have a role to play when it comes to reducing poverty in the Northwest Territories.

The government appreciates constructive advice from Regular Members on all matters and will certainly take the suggestions and this motion under consideration. However, as this motion is a recommendation to government, Cabinet will abstain from voting on the motion. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. To the motion.

Question is being called. Sorry; I’ll allow Mr. Hawkins, the Member for Yellowknife Centre.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I want to use this opportunity to inform the House, and of course the public as well, that I’ll be voting in favour of this particular motion. I’d like to give credit to Ms. Bisaro for being a champion to this particular issue. She carried it forward in the last term quite strongly and I’d like to give her recognition and certainly her due that she deserves for bringing forward this motion. So I think that should not be overlooked. She’s become the new champion.

---Applause

She’s blushing. May that be noted on the record?

---Laughter

We need more champions like Ms. Bisaro on this particular initiative and I think it’s very important, and we’ve heard today and many people have spoken in favour. If anything, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone speak against this particular motion. I’d be surprised if you could find a single person on the street out here today in the North or anywhere in Canada that would be in support of poverty in any method.

Let me not forget, at the same time, I want to recognize the work that government does try to do in recognition of its hard work on housing, education and even income support. As I may have mentioned earlier here today, income support I feel, in my opinion as well as many others, could be doing more. There’s no doubt that we could be doing more and I think this motion is an expression of that issue. Can we do it all? I’ve spoken many times and said no, we cannot do it all at once. I’m always in favour of us finding certain things we can do. Let’s do them well. Let’s continue the synergy of those types of initiatives or let’s do more. We can do more. Let’s be relentless on this particular issue.

There’s no better commitment to this House. They should hear no better commitment to this House than seeing this motion passed. I wish Cabinet itself would vote in favour of this motion with a free vote, but we know it will never happen. That does not mean, and my colleague here has it right by saying shame, but let it be noted, too, at the same time many of those Members whose hands will fall silent do support poverty initiatives and although they’re not allowed to vote in favour of it today, I do know many of my colleagues support this initiative although they’re in Cabinet. Again, they don’t like creative suggestions from this side of the House, which I find sad.

That said, the Premier did speak and say that they would recognize and hear the concerns and calls from Regular Members.

Again, I’m just going to finish by saying that again I’d like to give credit to Ms. Bisaro for being the champion of anti-poverty and I’d like to see it continued and someday I’d like to hear, maybe before the end of this term, this is one mountain we climbed and captured. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. I’ll allow the mover of the motion to have closing comments, Ms. Bisaro.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. First of all I’d like to thank my colleagues for their support, particularly Mr. Hawkins for calling me a champion. Thank you very much.

I’d like to just take note of two things in this motion. One is that it asks for the development of this strategy to be inclusive and to involve more than just the government. It needs to have a cross-section of society, and that was mentioned by my other colleagues. The other thing is that it asks for clear cross-departmental mechanisms for coordination and integration of actions. I think that’s one thing that if we are going to be successful, we absolutely have to be coordinated across the whole government.

I really do look forward to seeing a draft strategy, flawed as it may be since it may only be an internal document, but I do appreciate the commitment of the Premier to develop a strategy. I would like to say that I appreciate that we are giving direction to the government, and I appreciate that we have a Cabinet protocol which says that they don’t vote when Regular Members give them direction, but the Premier has indicated that this strategy is already in development. The government is already doing what we’re asking them to do. So I would urge my colleagues across the floor to show their election commitment and vote for this motion.

Lastly, speaking to all Regular Members, I would like to urge you to support this motion. I feel that we have support and I thank you very much. I would like to ask for a recorded vote.

Thank you, Ms. Bisaro. The Member is seeking a recorded vote. All those in favour of the motion, please rise.

All those opposed, please rise. All those abstaining, please rise.