[Witness speaks in Inuktitut]
I want to thank you for the opportunity to make a presentation on behalf of the Nunavut Roundtable for Poverty Reduction.
My name is Aluki Kotierk. I'm the president for Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated. I'm here with Aqattuaq Kiah Hachey, who is the assistant director for social and cultural development. Before I begin I'd like to extend a special recognition and welcome to the Nunavut Sivuniksavut students.
[Witness speaks in Inuktitut]
Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated, NTI, is the co-chair of the Nunavut Roundtable for Poverty Reduction with the Government of Nunavut. As you already may be aware Nunavut has 25 communities. The population is a little over 35,000, and of that, more than 85% are Inuit. Because the territory is so vast, politically, Inuit are represented by three different regions, by three different regional Inuit associations. In the east, we have Qikiqtani association. In the centre, we have Kivalliq association. In the west, we have the Kitikmeot association.
In recent living history, Inuit were moved from the land to communities, which explains the 25 communities that I just referenced. Inuit, as you may be aware, were a nomadic gathering and hunting society. Traditionally, Inuit didn't have a wage economy, yet they were able to provide for their food and shelter needs. There was no formal school system as we know currently but there were intricate ways in which knowledge was passed from parents, and from grandparents.
Inuit governed themselves autonomously and were not subject to policies from the government. Above all, Inuit were self-reliant and interdependent on each other in their family group. They were masters of their own destiny, of their own lives. I like to think of Inuit as the original affluent society because they had the skill sets to live on the land and were able to provide for their needs.
For many Inuit, poverty is associated with contemporary society. We will look at the numbers currently in Nunavut. In 2014, the median income reported for Nunavut, before tax, was $26,098, with 25% of the population reporting income less than $8,589. In Nunavut, 40% of the population are recipients of income assistance. Nunavut-wide, 52% live in social housing, with 38% of social housing tenants living in overcrowded conditions. In Nunavut, 56% of Inuit households are food insecure. This was recently highlighted in a Statistics Canada report on Inuit Nunangat last week. The cost of living, as you know, is 30% higher, with food costing twice as much as in southern Canada.
I will just talk a little about the poverty definition. The conventional definition of poverty used in Canada and internationally is a formula of various states of inequity and unfulfilled need conditions that were introduced in what is now our territory during the colonization process. Many of the indicators we use to measure the extent of poverty in Nunavut today are based in ways of living that emerged in our new communities.
The Nunavut Roundtable for Poverty Reduction in 2012 commissioned a report called “Understanding Poverty in Nunavut”. It outlines three elements that are used to measure poverty: financial poverty, not having enough income for basic needs such as food, shelter, and clothing; capability poverty, lacking the skills or health to meet their needs and participate fully in their community; and social exclusion, being excluded from economic, political, or community opportunities as a result of barriers to participation.
Since then, the poverty reduction round table has defined poverty in Nunavut as a situation that exists today in Nunavut when people cannot access the supports they need to maintain their connection to the land or to participate fully in a wage-based economy.
I'll just give you a background on the process by which we developed the round table for poverty reduction in Nunavut. In August 2010, Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated and the Government of Nunavut entered into a co-sponsorship partnership for the creation of the poverty reduction strategy for Nunavut. Learning from the Nunavut suicide prevention strategy community engagement model, NTI and the GN developed community engagement models for poverty reduction in Nunavut.
Members of the Nunavut Roundtable for Poverty Reduction include all the Nunavut communities and hamlets; regional Inuit associations, which include elder and youth representatives; businesses; and not-for-profit organizations and wellness centres.
Between August 2010 and November 2011, many dialogues on poverty and how to reduce it were undertaken across the territory, such as community round tables, a policy workshop, and ultimately, a territorial poverty reduction summit, held in November 2011 in our capital city of Iqaluit. Participants in the summit collectively drafted the makimaniq plan. For those of you who don't understand Inuktitut, “maki”, the root word, means “to stand up, to rise”, so makimaniq is the way in which we stand up.
The makimaniq plan was finalized in February 2012. This plan was created in response to the issue of poverty in Nunavut. The Government of Nunavut and Nunavut Tunngavik Incorporated allowed voices of each and every community to be heard. The makimaniq plan is our response to the poverty we see across our territory.
As stated in this plan:
Public engagement allows for the community voice to be amplified, as the process builds from the community level to the regional level to the territorial level. The essence of this process is respect for community perspectives, capacity and self-determination, demonstrated in the public community dialogues that took place across Nunavut. Dialogues informed regional roundtable discussion.
The makimaniq plan focuses strongly on community self-reliance and collaboration, and relies on Inuit traditions of working together—piliriqatigiingniq—and helping one another to address the root causes of poverty. The themes include collaboration and community participation, healing and well-being, education and skills development, food security, housing and income support, and community and economic development.
Themes for each round table have been consistent with priorities set out in the makimaniq plan and have been determined by round table members. Past themes have included inunnguiniq, justice and community healing, and income assistance.
I want to spend a few minutes talking about inunnguiniq—