Human Resources committee  Thank you. I'll first address the issue of the money that was allocated for first nations development and just draw attention to the fact that often in the Northwest Territories we run into problems on national programs because much of that money often goes through reserves, and

Human Resources committee  Absolutely. Those are the sorts of things that can be done while we're trying to get the bigger anti-poverty strategy in place.

Human Resources committee  Alternatives North's website is www.alternativesnorth.ca. We've done a child care study, and this issue is referred to there. But child care is a huge reason for being out of the workforce, especially women.

Human Resources committee  I don't want to bad mouth the corporations because they do a lot of good work, but I think I'll make a couple of points, if I may. In the first instance, to give you an idea, the first diamond mine that opened up here, during its first year of operation, made a million dollars a

Human Resources committee  Yes, I think that would be. Following up on a question Ms. Cadman raised, one of the priority areas the federal government should be looking at, if we're going to deal with poverty, is to deal with existing programs and try to up the amount of money in the hands of people who do

Human Resources committee  There are probably two comments I'd like to make. One is that I don't think I necessarily have prescriptions for what would be a good program for the Northwest Territories, and that probably speaks to what I think the federal government should be looking for if it does come up wi

Human Resources committee  Thank you for the question. The way the territorial funding formula is derived is I think a critical aspect to this. I'm not sure the committee is familiar with the way it's done, and I'm not going to do it justice either, but there is a package or a standard of living equated f

Human Resources committee  An element of this as well is that when you have higher-paid government jobs, higher-paid mining jobs, and higher-paid transportation industry jobs, when those folks lose their employment, they often have the choice of going back home. Many of those folks are from eastern Canada,

Human Resources committee  Yes, I think that's a great point. We've had many booms and busts in the past, where we've had strong GDP growth, high national income, that sort of thing, but poverty has been with us through all the booms and the busts. I think the concept of a rising tide raising all boats is

Human Resources committee  Thank you for that, Mr. Allison. Alternatives North is a social justice coalition that operates in the Northwest Territories. Among our ranks are representatives of the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, organized labour, environmental organizations, small businesses, and o