Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This government has chosen to pursue a focus on helping people lift themselves out of poverty. Unfortunately, the welfare-based system we now have in place has proven unsuccessful. It is complex, intrusive and inefficient and administration is too costly. Not enough dollars are getting through to the people who need them. Instead they are chewed up by an increasingly expensive bureaucracy. Positive outcomes are few and far between and the cycle of poverty deepens.
Economists of all political stripes, both right and left, agree that a better and more effective tool is the basic guaranteed income. Automatically topping up the incomes of people living in poverty using direct automatic payments through the existing tax system has many benefits. It allows families to keep their assets, get off and stay off social assistance, and it negates the need for an expensive bureaucracy to oversee a system of applications, monitoring, and a continuous justification on the part of the recipients.
The system encourages people to find work by giving them the security of an income guarantee without the fear of being worse off by working, unlike the current system with its clawbacks for extra income.
The idea of a guaranteed annual income is gaining traction. In Finland, the Pro-Basic Income Party won the recent national election. Calgary Mayor Nenshi, at the National Poverty Reduction Summit last month in Ottawa, called for a “brave step” toward a basic income guarantee. Edmonton mayor Iveson spoke in favour of it, suggesting that Alberta’s two largest cities should pilot it towards poverty solutions that work.
The premier of PEI is on record as supporting a guaranteed income. Groups are sprouting up all over Canada and an international movement towards poverty reduction based on a guaranteed income is growing worldwide.
We in the NWT have the dubious distinction of having the greatest income disparity in Canada. Rather than pursuing the same hopeless techniques for poverty reduction, we need to do something different. It’s time to give a new idea a chance, and the new idea that is most likely to be successful is a basic income guarantee. Where is the pilot study on this potential? We have nothing to lose but poverty. Let’s at least look into it and include it on our transition papers.