I want to jump in there, because one of the things we hear as we cross the country is that there's no official measurement of poverty, whether it's market basket or LICO. You raise a great point, because none of those are kept in the Yukon.

My question to you is this. Based on the cost of living here, etc., is there one measurement that you would favour? If we had to come up with a definition of poverty, would it be looking at a market basket? Obviously, the cost here in the north is considerably more for the same types of wages. In Vancouver yesterday people said, “I wouldn't say a living wage, but certainly a wage that was comparable, that would be helpful, would be $11 per hour.” Quite clearly, that would not be the case here because of the cost of housing, etc.

Have you given any thought to the thought process? We'd like to even maybe make a recommendation that we should be looking at one. I realize neither one may be perfect, but it would be nice to at least have a measurement so that we can then determine if we're making progress or not. We have to measure it somehow.

Have there been any thoughts around market basket measures versus LICOs?

9:15 a.m.

Representative, Yukon Anti-Poverty Coalition

Laurie MacFeeters

There's been lots of talk.

Are the territorial government people going to talk to you at all? I haven't seen your agenda and I don't know.

They've done a lot of work. It partly speaks to Julie's point that we're so thin on the ground. She's the staff person at the food bank. That's singular. For some of this research and background work we don't have the time and we don't get it done. We piggyback on national organizations and look to them for that, and unfortunately try to Yukonize it, and that's very difficult.

Although things like guaranteed annual income and such are great models, and for a whole lot of reasons we support those kinds of models for income, the market basket has a lot more appeal of being adaptable to the situation of the north. We have communities like Old Crow that are fly-in only, and they are very different from Whitehorse. The opportunity to adapt a market basket may make it a better model.

At the Anti-Poverty Coalition I can't remember when we've had specific discussions on that. The last discussion I had was with a guy who worked in the territorial government, but they worry about it in terms of social assistance.

9:15 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Dean Allison

Go ahead, Julie.

9:15 a.m.

Executive Director, Food Bank Society of Whitehorse

Julie Ménard

When I said that the food bank didn't exist, we did have discussions for 10 years in the Yukon, and in fact we've been working on this. The Yukon society is the funder or helper that puts the food bank on. One of the reasons is because the territorial government didn't recognize the poverty in the Yukon, because we have some of the highest salaries. If you take a brief look at the situation, you'll think that everyone here is rich. They all work for the federal or territorial government. That may be, but there's a big part of the population who are non-profit and lower, and that is not in the picture most of the time.

I think we're now trying to put this in front. I think the territorial government noticed it and realized that the food bank is needed there, that there's another part of the population we have to think about.

9:15 a.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Dean Allison

Thank you.

Did you have another comment, Amy?

9:15 a.m.

Employer Liaison and Job Coach, Yukon Council on disABILITY

Amy Martey

I don't have any statistics to represent this, but again, if somebody were coming into Whitehorse for a day, it would appear that it's a fairly well-off community. But I feel that the middle class here is very small. We have people who are making well over $50,000 a year and then we have the bulk of the population who are one or two paycheques away from being homeless. And that also includes the people who are working within non-profits themselves. You have support workers with an incredibly high burnout rate earning $16 or $17 an hour with a clientele of 50-plus as well. That's another thing to factor into that.