Human Resources Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), our study on the federal contribution to reducing poverty in Canada will commence.

It's great to be here in Yellowknife today. I want to take a second to thank all the witnesses for being here. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules as you come to testify.

Very quickly, we've been doing a study on poverty over the last year and a half. We've been east, and we've certainly been out west this week. It was suggested that we come north, and I'm glad we have. We were in Whitehorse yesterday and Yellowknife today, and we are heading back to Edmonton tomorrow.

It has been great to listen to what's going on in the communities. I think we all agree that when we're in Ottawa it's kind of hard to know what's really going on in the country, unless we're out talking to people in their respective communities. So it is good for us to be here.

I'll start with you, Mr. McDonald, for seven minutes. We'll go all the way across for seven minutes, and then we'll look at moving around the room for questions. We'll continue to move that way until we hit 10 a.m., or until people have no more questions, although it has been my experience with politicians that we're never short of questions.

I'll stop talking and turn it over to the witnesses.

Mr. McDonald, you're with Alternatives North. We're looking forward to hearing a bit about your organization, what you do, and maybe some recommendations for us as a committee to take back to the government. Thank you for being here. The floor is yours. You have seven minutes.

[Ben McDonald, Co-Chair, Alternatives North]

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 other concerned individuals who care about social justice issues. We've been in operation primarily in Yellowknife, but in the Northwest Territories for almost 17 years, so we've had a fairly long time to grow roots in the community.

Over the years we have had special interest in poverty issues. We have produced papers on territorial government clawbacks of the child tax benefit supplement and on poverty specifically, trying to encourage a different strategy on the part of the territorial government when it comes to their income security programs. We have a paper on child care and the need for a universal child care system in the north. We have frequently commented on housing issues, cost-of-living issues, such as energy, and other issues like that.

On behalf of the organization, I'd like to thank you all for coming north. It is a good opportunity for us to exchange views on what may be different perspectives.

To get to the meat of the issue, Alternatives North believes there are two reasons why the federal government should be especially concerned about the eradication of poverty in the north. Issue number one is our territorial status. It means that our tax base, our ability to raise funds to deal with issues on our own, is more limited. Approximately 70% of our budget is a direct grant from the federal government. To deal with any new programs is a huge challenge for our legislative assembly members and the people of the Northwest Territories.

The federal government believes we are best suited to be a territory--I guess in cooperation with the people who live up here. But along with that territorial status comes an obligation to treat us with special care. That includes Yukon and Nunavut as well.

The second characteristic of the north that gives extra responsibility to the federal government lies in the composition of our population. With a large number of aboriginal people in the Northwest Territories, the federal government has fiduciary responsibility for them. When you look at the statistics on how people live in the Northwest Territories, there is clearly a race divide on an income basis. The statistics from the NWT Bureau of Statistics bears that out. There is a special problem with aboriginal people in the Northwest Territories when it comes to income security.

Those are the two primary reasons for our believing that the federal government should take a lead on the anti-poverty issues. But it should also address the territories in a different way from some of the provinces.

We are now in a recession. The most recent statistics you'll find from the Bureau of Statistics are from 2006. I think we have a fairly serious problem developing in the Northwest Territories as a result of the recession. Mines are slowing down, governments are trying to pull in their horns, and large employers like the transportation sector are all trying to pull in their horns.

With unemployment comes greater poverty. So this is a bad time, and it's an especially propitious time for the federal government to be looking at an anti-poverty strategy. This is the time, when we're looking for solutions to the recession, to also look for solutions to poverty.

On the specific area of an anti-poverty strategy, we believe there are examples both in the country and internationally that I'm sure members of the committee are more familiar with than I am. But programs are successful if they have measurable goals and goals that measure the social conditions of the people who are affected by them.

We want to look at the health of children. We want to look at housing situations, and other things like that. So any anti-poverty strategy that comes out should have measurable targets. It should have funding that is dedicated to the task. And it should be an upfront and open program resulting from consultation with the people most affected by the issue.

In the Northwest Territories there's a special problem with homelessness. I mentioned this before. But I do believe that any strategy that comes out is going to require a national housing program of some sort. It should deal with providing resources to the territorial and provincial governments to allow them to augment the public housing situation. It also would be wise for us to go back to the idea of co-op housing, where private ownership is not necessary. There are cooperative principles that operate in the Northwest Territories as well as in the rest of the country, and it would be good for the federal government to show leadership in those areas and move in that direction.

Another area that I think the federal government has a special role in accommodating is the universal child care plan. In Yellowknife there are presently only three operating child care centres for a town of 19,000. It's very difficult for anybody to find child care services that are very accessible.

Another area where I think the federal government has a role to play is in facilitating the greater unionization of the workforce. The statistics are quite clear that poverty levels go down as the proportion of the labour force that is unionized goes up. There's a direct correlation there. That's a federal government responsibility.

We also think that the feds can help with improving the minimum wage. The number being bandied around is $10 an hour on a national level. But for high-cost areas like the Northwest Territories, if there is to be a minimum wage, then there should be a cost of living factor added on top of that for remote areas, where $10 an hour is just simply not adequate.

I realize I'm out of time. I just want to get in the fact that Alternatives North believes the first pillar that needs to be addressed is getting more money into the hands of poor people. We believe one of the ways to achieve this, one of the ways that seems to be most efficient for dealing with this, is through a guaranteed annual income. We endorse that as a principle. We believe the federal government could achieve this, with its relatively deeper pockets and its ability to set national standards and to make the money that is available to the territories and provinces conditional on those national standards.

I thank you for that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Mr. McDonald.

We're now going to move to Gordon Van Tighem, president of the Northwest Territories Association of Communities. He is also the Mayor of the City of Yellowknife.

Mr. Mayor, welcome, sir. The floor is yours.

[Gordon Van Tighem, President and Mayor of the City of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories Association of Communities]

Good morning, and bienvenue à Yellowknife.

The Northwest Territories Association of Communities welcomes the opportunity to appear before the committee today and share some of our views. Our association was formed in 1967. The membership includes 27 of 33 communities and is home to approximately 97% of NWT residents.

Poverty is an issue that affects every community in the Northwest Territories, whether it's homeless people we meet on the streets of Yellowknife, families depending on social assistance and facing high food, fuel, and heating costs in isolated communities, or a person working for a low wage struggling to get by in a high-cost environment.

We see many of the same problems experienced in southern Canada, but here in the NWT the impact of poverty is magnified by transportation challenges, the boom-and-bust cycle of our economy, and electricity costs that top $2 per kilowatt hour in some communities. In Paulatuk, which is home to 300 people on the shore of the Beaufort Sea, a two-litre carton of milk costs almost $9 and a loaf of bread will take a $7.20 bite out of your family budget.

NWT'S 33 communities are small and spread out—only nine have 800 people or more and only five have more than 1,000 people. We total a little over 43,000 people, 31% of whom are 19 years of age or younger. There's been plenty of talk lately about the importance of the Canadian Arctic, and it can be difficult to know where to begin in dealing with the challenges presented by poverty in the north.

You'll be hearing presentations about the things we need—day care, lower food costs, improved food mail, increased northern living allowances, and other ideas. These are all important things, but we believe that building healthy, strong, and sustainable communities is a step towards tackling poverty in the Northwest Territories. By investing in communities, we can provide a foundation for a strong economy and healthy families.

In towns that have good water, affordable housing, power, and jobs, people can live healthy lifestyles. To get there, we've identified four critical areas: transportation infrastructure, community infrastructure deficit, federal funding programs, and the importance of our having a say in our own future.

One factor that drives up the cost of living is our transportation system. Perishable food has to be flown into many communities on a regular basis. Basics are shipped in via barge or sealift in the summer or by ice roads during the coldest part of the year.

You may have caught Ice Pilots NWT, a show that just was launched on History Television. It's about Buffalo Airways and their operation in the north. One of the first episodes chronicled how a broken engine on an airplane caused food not to be delivered to one Sahtu community for several days. Shelves were bare, and what fresh produce remained was old and mouldy. The challenge is the weather. And you can see that getting a good meal, when you can afford the staples, is even more challenging.

Half our communities still don't have year-round road access. While we don't expect roads to all of our communities, improving transportation links is essential. Our member communities believe that completing the Mackenzie Valley Highway from Wrigley to the Dempster Highway and from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk is one of the crucial building blocks. In May our members endorsed two resolutions calling for just that, and in October the Canadian Chamber of Commerce also endorsed a resolution calling for completion of the Mackenzie Valley Highway, which they referred to as the north-south TransCanada Highway.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities' policy statement on the northern and remote issue says that existing transportation networks significantly impede economic competitiveness and quality of life in northern communities. This is a factor that's often overlooked, quite aside from the positive benefits of the Mackenzie project.

In September we welcomed nearly $1 million to do preliminary work on an all-weather road linking Tuktoyaktuk to Inuvik. It's an important step in living up to Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's dream from over 50 years ago of building roads to resources. We hope it doesn't end there and that it continues with the next step, the completion of the Mackenzie Valley Highway, which was promised by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1972.

In 2007, the FCM reported that across Canada the municipal infrastructure deficit was over $123 billion. That's the cost of maintaining and upgrading existing and municipally owned assets, suggesting a crisis. Here in the north, estimates suggest that the community infrastructure deficit is about $400 million. Those needs include recreation facilities, fire protection equipment, roads, solid waste sites, and other municipal buildings, infrastructure that is essential to improving quality of life and providing a base to build a sustainable economy.

Thanks to the territorial New Deal for Communities, responsibility for infrastructure development and guaranteed annual funding was transferred to community governments a couple of years ago, and our communities have taken charge of addressing their own infrastructure needs.

Even so, we depend on programs like the federal gas tax and Building Canada fund, which also brings challenges, such as the community's ability to fund its portion. I heard it mentioned in the Yukon that it's a challenge in aboriginal communities because most of the federal programs are set up on a reserve basis and we don't have those. We've had to find other creative ways of flowing funds to aboriginal communities. Again, we'd like to quote the FCM:

If Canada is to prosper, municipal infrastructure investments must support the economic potential of our cities and communities. For this to happen, funding must reflect the long-term nature of infrastructure investments.

We also want to express the important role communities play on the front line of Canadian sovereignty in the north. Without communities, Canada's claim to the Arctic is weakened, and of course these communities need people where there are jobs and where they can afford to live. NWT has seen considerable investment in recent years, thanks to programs like MRIF, the gas tax fund, and Building Canada, with the latter two being excellent examples that are built around a base-plus formula that gives our community real dollars but allows us to build.

What doesn't work in the north is per capita funding. It sounds fair, and maybe it is in southern Canada, but the north's small population and high costs combine to make it unworkable. For example, the recent RInC formula, the Recreational Infrastructure Canada funding, provided $189,000 to each of the three northern territories. I don't need to give examples of how little that can do. The NWT did not seek any of the first-round funding. In the second round, 22 communities applied and three years' funding of $550,000 has been allocated.

This is simply another example of why per capita funding doesn't work. I'd like to look at the cost of construction in the north. To build a middle-class garage, it's $134 a foot in Calgary; it's $124 a foot in Edmonton, $120 in Grande Prairie. In Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, it's $164 a foot. In Yellowknife, it's $164 a foot. It's $208 a foot in Inuvik, and it's $314 in Sachs Harbour.

You also need to understand that if you need a crane, in some of the communities it has to come in on the sealift one year and it may not get out until the next year, so there's a piece of equipment tied up. You might only need it for three weeks.

It's also necessary to point out the challenges of dealing with the federal bureaucracy. There are accounting rules and reporting procedures that must be followed. However, it can be challenging for a community to complete a complicated application form when they only have a few days to do it. Even if they can get through that, they have to wait months to hear back, watching their very short building season slip away.

In the past couple of months, we have seen a number of House of Commons committees visit the north. We welcome the opportunity to have our say and to be heard, but it can't end there. The NWT's hamlets, settlements, villages, towns, and cities will be profoundly affected by the decisions that will be made in the coming years. We should be granted a prominent, meaningful role in making policy decisions that will shape the Arctic and our hometown.

When Canada's northern strategy was unveiled this summer, the announcement took place in Ottawa. The commitments being made are important and welcome, but northern voices were noticeably absent. We expect big things. We now have a northern economic development agency, CanNor, but its funding programs now go directly to communities. It sounds like an efficient move, but they used to depend on the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs of the Government of Northwest Territories to fill in the forms for them, so there's a little leap there.

In closing, thank you for the time to speak with you today. We know that tackling the problem of poverty is a huge issue that will take several years, hard work, and plenty of dollars to overcome. We hope that NWT communities can be part of the solution. To do that, we need to improve our transportation links, funding programs based on a base-plus formula that recognizes our significant challenges. Most of all, we want to be partners in planning the programs and building the north so our people can have good jobs, healthy lives, and where everyone can afford to buy a carton of milk and a loaf of bread.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Gordon.

We're now going to move over to Ms. Wilson, with the YWCA in Yellowknife. Ms. Wilson is the director of emergency and transitional housing.

Welcome, Ms. Wilson. The floor is yours.

[Catherine Wilson, Director, Emergency and Transitional Housing, YWCA Yellowknife]

Thank you.

Welcome to Yellowknife. I'm really pleased to be here today.

The YWCA has been in Yellowknife for over 40 years, providing various services to families that are experiencing homelessness. Basically, we take care of and provide services for the poor in the community.

I've been involved with the Y for the past 12 years, and I just want to share some of the experiences of the families that we see here in the north. I don't have any recommendations to give you, but I want to put a face to the poor people in this community, and especially in the north.

In my 15 years of being here—I came to Canada as an immigrant, and I'm trying to share my story so you can know the perception I'm coming from. I came to Canada as an immigrant, found my way up here in Yellowknife, and ended up working with the aboriginal women at the Native Women's Association. I've been working with women for 15 years, since I've been here in the north.

My perception of Canada, coming from Ghana, in West Africa, was of a land of plenty, a land of opportunity, a land where you can do and become whoever you want to become if you put work to it. Very inspiring. We bundled up and we came. And it has been good to me. Canada is a good country. But coming up here and seeing the aboriginal people who live here and the opportunities that I, as an immigrant, was able to get here but that were not provided to them, that broke my heart. The way they live in the community in Yellowknife breaks my heart.

There is no rhyme or reason why any person in the north should be living in sub-third world country standards. We live in a place that is minus 40 degrees, where the wind chill can go to minus 60, and people are sleeping outside because there's no housing. Freezing to death in Canada, which is a first world country, is not acceptable. We see the faces of women and children weeping, crying, because there is no food on the table to eat. That is not our Canada. That is not the Canada we dreamed of. We see fathers and mothers and children all in despair because there's nowhere to go, no dreams that they can aspire to that will be meaningful to their families. The sense of hopelessness, the sense of urgency, you know, in their everyday living, of hoping to grasp onto something that they can do just to have a living is incredible.

The YWCA provides several programs. We provide shelter for a woman fleeing from abuse, we provide emergency and transitional housing for families experiencing homelessness, we provide housing for people with disabilities. We also provide the after-school program in all the schools in Yellowknife to help families and children.

Every family that has come through the Y has really great needs. Housing, food, the basic needs that should be provided to these families are not met.

Yellowknife attracts most of the people from the communities. When you go to the communities, when you look at the housing situation there, it's really deplorable. You can find 15 people, 12 people, both adults and children, all living in their one or two bedrooms. And I'm not talking really, really nice houses, but houses with no insulation, housing that is dilapidated. People are sleeping in shifts in the north. This is not Canada.

If they have a medical situation and they're coming to Yellowknife, they get here and most of them see some of the programs they can get here. They can be close to schools; that will provide their kids with good schools. They have recreational centres that they can access for their kids. They can get to counselling. So they decide to move here with their children.

For example, a family or a mom comes in from a community to do something medical here for the first time. She sees the amenities here and thinks she can bring her children; they could get good schools, they have all sorts of things they can do. So they move here to Yellowknife. When they move to Yellowknife they bring their children. The first thing they face is money for food, because once you get here and you decide to stay here, you are basically on your own. So you have to find housing, and there is none. The landlords will not rent to people who are on income support because the system does not provide rent early enough to make it worthwhile for them, so they don't.

Then they don't have any place to go. Sometimes they sleep with friends, and you can find them sleeping on friends' couches with children in other places. Then they have to take the child to school. How do they get there? It's minus 40, and they have to work. Sometimes in the houses they are in they can't even sleep because there is a lot of addictions going on there. So if they can't sleep, how can they work?

The needs of the north are many. Unfortunately, a majority of the people who we see are aboriginal people.

When they come into transitional housing, which is the program I run, we try to stabilize the family so we provide a roof over their head. We have 39 apartment units in which we house families experiencing homelessness. Those units we furnish through the community. So the community of Yellowknife gives us donations all year round so that we can furnish those units for family use. So basically a family can come to this program, get a place to stay; they can just come with whatever clothes they have on, have a place to stay, shelter, furniture. We provide some food before their assistance on income support kicks in, because there is a process that takes about a week or a week and a half to get into it. So we provide them with something to tide them over until their money gets in. We help them so they can get their children to school.

We provide support services. If they have any addictions, we help them and refer them. We have programs like that in Yellowknife, mine being one of them, and the Centre for Northern Families is another. There's also the Salvation Army. And there's the SideDoor, which takes care of youth, but they don't have any shelter for them.

These are the four programs that we provide here in Yellowknife for families experiencing homelessness. All of these programs are running in the negative. We are not being funded appropriately to help families. The human misery that we see up here is not warranted, not in a first world country. We see houses being built, roads being paved, all sorts of economic development stuff, and human beings sleeping on the street because they don't have anywhere to go. We need to do something, and it's urgent, especially in Yellowknife. It's not getting any better. I've been here for 15 years and it's actually getting worse.

The services that are being provided to the poor people are not adequate. We want to help poor people so that they can integrate into society and become somebody and contribute within the society, and yet the support services and the programs that are provided for them don't help their situation. It doesn't. Somebody on income support with three children, a mother with three children on income support, is basically as good as dead, because the money that is provided to help her to feed her children doesn't even last for two weeks here in the north. She has to find other means to get food on the table.

Housing that she can get into, which is public housing, works on points. If, for example, she's staying with somebody, it's not good enough. She basically has to be out on the land, at the park, camping in minus 40 degrees, for her to qualify to be on top of the list so she can have a place to stay. This is not good.

I don't know what else I can say, but I think my time is already done. There is more that I can say, but I'm glad you are here today listening to this. I am hoping you put a sense of urgency on this and do something for the poor in Canada, and especially in Canada's north.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you, Ms. Wilson. I think probably through the questions you may get a chance to add more to that.

We're going to start as we normally do, over on my left-hand side here.

Mr. Savage, the floor is yours for seven minutes.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for coming this morning.

My name is Mike Savage and I'm a member of the Liberal Party. I'm the human resources critic. I come from Nova Scotia. We've been working on this poverty study now for some time, going back into the last Parliament, and it's important for us to come to places like Yellowknife and Whitehorse and the other communities we've been visiting this week. Although we know there are some national strategies that can deal with some of the basic things--a lot of the things that you mentioned, Ben, in terms of social justice and the poverty needs of Canada--there are some unique issues that we need to make part of our report as well, and every place we go, we hear about those.

In British Columbia, on Monday, we heard a lot about the loss of the salmon and how that's affecting particularly indigenous people there. Yesterday we heard about communities that don't have clean water and about the cost of construction, and we're hearing some of those stories today.

One of the things I'm struck by is that in the statistics, in looking at the places we're visiting this week, if you compare Winnipeg and Yellowknife, for example, in Winnipeg the average house cost, or the average value of an owned dwelling, in 2006 was $168,000, and in Yellowknife it was $302,000, so almost twice as high. A two-bedroom apartment rents for $769 in Winnipeg and in Yellowknife it rents for $1,450. In Winnipeg the minimum wage is $9, and in Yellowknife it's $8.25, if I understand it. I don't know where you'd live if you made $8.25 an hour in Yellowknife. Where would you live?

[Gordon Van Tighem]

Hopefully, with your parents.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

There wouldn't be a lot of options, and I think that's what you're reinforcing to us. There are obviously some very unique needs, minimum wage being one of them.

There are those who say that in addressing poverty, what we need to do is increase the economy of a country--a rising tide lifts all boats. Undoubtedly, there's some truth to that, but the Northwest Territories has gone through a pretty big increase in its GDP, the highest increase per capita in Canada from 2001 to 2006, but we still have that huge gap between the rich and the poor. I just wonder if anybody would like to talk about that a bit.

[Ben McDonald]

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 not an operational one, if we actually want to deal with poverty in a meaningful way.

I think it might be part of the overall package, but if we're looking specifically at poverty, at an anti-poverty strategy, then the idea that a general boost to the economy is going to be a general boost to poor people, I just don't think holds water. We have to distinguish between those two. We have to dedicate effort and money and planning to getting poor people non-poor. And at the same time, or on a parallel course, I guess we can do economic development.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

My good friend, Carolyn Bennett, often says that Canadians expect European-style social programs on American-style taxation. I think that is one of the things this poverty study has to address.

Food Banks Canada released its annual report, which showed that in Canada, food bank usage went up 18%. They also indicated that they are now identifying who is coming to food banks. I have a quote. It says: “Aboriginal people constitute a slightly larger proportion of food bank clients, making up more than 11% of those assisted in 2008 and 2009... Provincial figures vary considerably, with Aboriginal people”--first nations, Métis, and Inuit people--“accounting for 91% of food bank clients in the territories”.

We are not meeting with anybody. Is there a food bank here in Yellowknife, and would 90% of the recipients be aboriginal people? Perhaps, Kate, you could talk about what percentage of the people you deal with who are in crisis are aboriginal.

[Catherine Wilson]

At least 95% of the people we deal with are aboriginal.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mayor, would that make sense in terms of food bank usage?

[Gordon Van Tighem]

Definitely. We have several food bank types of outlets. Our specific food bank only opens once a week. I heard statistics from the Yukon, which you probably heard yesterday, that food bank usage has gone from families to single males, and there is a transition that is being observed. We also have a food rescue program. They've diverted about 75 tonnes of food that would have been in the dump. It has gone into feeding people. It's a growth industry.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

One of the things the food bank people reported last year was that in 2009 versus 2008, usage was up 18% overall nationally. Last year it was pretty stable, but they've had a higher percentage of working poor who use the food banks. I would have to think that in a place like Yellowknife, where the cost of living is so high and wages on the low end do not necessarily keep up with that, the issue of the working poor must be an exploding issue of poverty. I'm just guessing. I'm looking to see if that is true.

[Catherine Wilson]

That is true, from what we see. We have a program the Y runs. We call it a clothing exchange. We collect donations from the community and put them in this place. We open it on Wednesdays. We've done that for about 10 years. Anybody who needs any clothing or any furnishings or kitchen utensils can come there and pick what they need, and it's free. Over the years, we've seen the dynamics changing in the people who come there to take clothing and items. We are seeing more of the working poor coming in as well as the poor themselves. It is changing. We are seeing more of those coming into our transitional housing also, because they cannot afford the rent that is out there.

[Gordon Van Tighem]

The thing that also shows in your statistics is the gap in our wages. We have the second highest family income in Canada here, but we also have the poor and the working poor, which creates a challenge. It is an extremely generous community in the north, so a lot of that is masked. Kate mentioned the clothing and the food that is distributed. There are several outlets that do that as well within the city. Sometimes the statistics aren't there, because a lot of it is masked by the generosity of the community.

[Catherine Wilson]

I can add a little bit. For example, the transitional apartments we run are all furnished by the community. When the families move out, we give them the furniture to help them with their transition, and we replace it. We have been doing that for 10 years. It has been the community that has been providing those donations so that we can continue to run this program.

[Ben McDonald]

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, southern Canada, or western Canada. Those people have options available to them that cause them to leave the community. The working poor and the aboriginal folks don't have that choice. That is not available to them. When they are in that situation, they have to make do in the sorts of situations Kate and Gord have been talking about. That's why there is a race face to the nature of poverty in the Northwest Territories.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I know I'm out of time. I'd just note that you mentioned the clawback on the national child benefit. That's something we need to make sure of: that any provincial clawbacks of federal programs be part of the recommendation.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I'll give people a chance to put on their headsets, if they need translation, so that I don't cut into Mr. Lessard's time. Once you're ready, I'll give him a chance to get going.

Mr. Lessard, the floor is yours, sir. You have seven minutes—and welcome to the group.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am pleased to see all of you again. I say it to our guests, because I could not be in Vancouver and Whitehorse. I also want to thank you for being there.

My name is Yves Lessard, and I am the Member of Parliament for Chambly—Borduas. The riding is located south of Montreal. I see here that the population of the Northwest Territories is 41,464. There are two and a half times that many people in my riding. I realize that the situation is altogether different, since my riding is in an urban area that I can cover by car in half a day, whereas you sometimes have to cross your territory by plane and it takes a day.

I myself am from a region with wide-open spaces, Abitibi-Témiscamingue. I am also quite familiar with life throughout northwestern Quebec.

I am going to refer to the evidence from Ms. Wilson, who came here 12 years ago now. When she arrived, we were normally supposed to be at the last stage in the process of attaining zero poverty. We known that in 1989, the House of Commons voted unanimously in favour of the objective of eliminating poverty by the year 2000. Yet we still see situations like the one Ms. Wilson described.

I know from evidence given in other circumstances, in particular when we studied employability, that it is not social solidarity or local or territorial solidarity that is lacking, as the mayor so aptly told this committee. It seems to me that what is missing is something else that we have yet to discover. Do we have to look to powers or strategic measures to meet this objective? That is I want to explore a bit with you.

I will start with Mr. McDonald. You said at the outset that we needed to talk about territorial status. If I understand you correctly, the territory should be treated differently than the provinces. Can you explain to us briefly what you mean by that and how that would change our approach and the way we deal with poverty?

[Ben McDonald]

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 for the south that is based on a certain package of taxes and social services and other things like that. Then there's a calculation done to determine what kind of money would be required by the territories to provide a similar service here, considering what we can raise with our own source revenues. That money then comes to us in the form of a formula funding grant.

The point I'm making is that if we are going to have an anti-poverty strategy that works in the north, the formula should accommodate this as an extra. It has to be an add-on, I think, in the formula. It can't just be, as Gord was saying, a per capita funding grant that goes to all provinces, or something like that, because the federal government looks at us and says, “If you were living in Toronto, or if you were living in Prince Edward Island, this is how much money you'd need to do so.” That is now the standard we're supposed to be living under.

My point in saying this was that the formula should accommodate an anti-poverty strategy, if that's the direction we're going in.

Is that clear?

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

How would it change a situation like the one described by the mayor, namely that in some communities, people pay $9 for a quart of milk and $7 for a loaf of bread? That is a striking example in my opinion, because these are basic needs, in the same way electricity is a basic need. This is one of the few places where we worry about electricity.

At the same time, the mayor raises the question of transportation. In winter, planes are the mode of transportation; in summer it's boats. Are there other ways? Is it enough to build a road or will we still end up with very high prices and a situation that stays the same, because the community did not have the means to take matters into hand in order to get fresh food at lower prices.

I do not know if what I am saying is clear, but it seems to me that there is a risk of ending up back in the same situation.