I agree entirely with what you're saying. I'm new to the Council of Persons with Disabilities, but for 10 years I worked as mayor in one of the northern communities and lived my life in Nunavut and NWT.
One of the things I touched on was the working poor. It includes those persons with disabilities who are struggling to get by, who are often the first families to enter a shelter. There is hidden homelessness in the north, because many northern communities don't have shelters. We're lucky here in Yellowknife to be able to have a shelter. A new building actually just opened the other day, a day service, to compensate the Salvation Army and other locations.
But oftentimes the working poor are struggling to get by with the increased cost of fuel and utilities. You see the commercial from time to time with the roof coming off the house. You're always deciding whether you're going to be paying for your rent or paying for your food. She is deciding between a can of coffee and the rent. That is very true for people in the north. You're struggling to decide whether you're going to lose your house and move in with another family and risk incest, abuse, and other social problems. So you're always deciding what you can afford, because you can't afford everything.
They have income, but because rent is going up--there is no cap on rent in the private market--those people who are trying to escape social housing, who are trying to provide a life for themselves, who are trying to use their life skills to budget and to be able to create livelihoods, are working, but they're barely getting by. They're barely able to cover basic expenses. As soon as you add into that prescription medication and everything else, people don't have enough to survive.
Income levels are quite low. You try to use resources such as income support to compensate, but if you do have income coming in, you do not get income support. It's simply deducted from your income support. Oftentimes I think there is a higher number of working poor who are struggling to get by.
In terms of the issue with fuel--