Bob Bromley

It sounds like that’s the hard reality and our budgeting system does not have flexibility to do this and redefine that base even conservatively. We know typically this year the numbers I have have increased about 5.5 percent. I think in the order of 4 to 6 percent is typical across Canada, so we could adjust it by 3 or 3.5 percent theoretically, but it doesn’t sound like we have that flexibility. So, onwards.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I’m not totally sure the Minister has been hearing my description of poverty traps. This guy is stuck at home with children and when he tries to work a little bit, it gets clawed back and he’s even worse off. When the Minister or myself make an extra $1,000, we pay income tax. We are not living in poverty, so we contribute about $400 of that back to society, and I think we would agree, all of us, that that’s money well spent. But when someone on income support makes an extra $1,000, they only get to keep $150.

How can the Minister or any government official possibly...

Thanks to the Minister. Does our budgeting process allow us the flexibility of saying we’re going to assume a 5 percent increase this year when we’re budgeting for these costs, or do we have to basically go on what it was last year and deal with the extra costs through a supp? Thank you.

I can assure the Minister that I do track that information and we have the poorest 20 percent of people in this jurisdiction in the country and it’s not improving. I appreciate that we do what we can, the Minister does what he can, but what I’m suggesting here is ways that we can do more with less.

As I mentioned, Nutrition North does food basket surveys on what it costs to feed a family of four in our communities. Their data shows that the amount provided by income support is only half of what is needed. Maintaining our focus on the most critical element underserved here – that’s children –...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to be clear, is that for total costs for health care services for residents outside the NWT?

Charles now owes money for child care and still does not have enough to feed his family. I wish I could say this story has a happy ending, but Charles is having a hard time seeing a way out.

This is what I mean when I talk about poverty traps. Our Income Security programs are inadequate and the built-in clawbacks create a disincentive to work. I must point out again, that rather than providing the stable home children need to succeed, living in a poverty trap means toxic stress, leading to delays in early childhood development that will, sadly, be costly for all and for lifetimes.

This morning I...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I understand a good proportion of this is due to the 7 percent increase in electrical rates. This is a formula we have known several years in advance; this is a good example of my perplexity of why we are dealing with this in a supp when we know well ahead of time that we are having a 7 percent increase in our electrical rates. I don’t doubt that there are other factors involved here, but clearly a big proportion of that is the 7 percent increase, a substantive increase as we’ve had for the last three years. We know we are going to have a 5 percent increase next year...

Thank you. I’d appreciate it if that could be provided to the House and tabled. Why the increase here?

I think many entities would budget with this in mind. If the supplementary reserve is insufficient, let’s change it. But what happens is we end up stealing from Peter to pay Paul here when in fact we could allocate responsibly right in the beginning. As I say, this degree of correction is unacceptable in my mind. Many of these things, as I say, are predictable and pretty well known. This government’s been operating a long time.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Unfortunately, this expenditure will drive us well beyond our supplementary reserve. In fact, it blows it right out of the water. In the supportive documents, I keep seeing the word shortfall. What’s happened here is we have done a very shoddy job on budgeting. This is riddled with examples of entirely predictable costs and it reflects to me a really irresponsible approach to budgeting in the first place, and here we are again putting our supplementary reserve into major deficit. This isn’t the first time this has been brought up. We have been bringing this up repeatedly...