Report shows NWT income disparity
GNWT signs anti-poverty agreement, problem costs territory more than $72 million every year
Kassina Ryder
Northern News Services
Published Monday, December 16, 2013
NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
The Northwest Territories is one of the richest jurisdictions in Canada, but nearly 20 per cent of its population lives in poverty, according to the latest numbers.
The Government of the Northwest Territories signed an anti-poverty charter on Dec. 5, which obligates the territory, as well as aboriginal and community governments and non-government organizations to work on a territorial action plan to address poverty.
The Building on the Strengths of Northerners: A Strategic Framework Toward the Elimination of Poverty in the NWT report, published last June, measured the rate of poverty in the territory and is the plan's guiding document.
The report states that though the NWT boasts the country's highest Gross Domestic Product at $3.52 million, as well as the highest individual income in Canada, the income gap between the territory's richest and poorest residents is enormous.
The territory's richest residents have an annual income of more than $200,000 a year, while its poorest live on less than $18,000 per year.
Sixteen per cent of all families in the NWT earn less than $30,000 a year, according to the report.
The report used Paulatuk as a case study to illustrate the situation faced by many of the territory's residents.
It found that the number of people in income support grew from 79 residents in 2010 to 92 in 2011. It also found that as of 2008, more than 75 per cent of residents hunted and fished for more than half of the meat their families used.
But Paulatuk mayor Ray Ruben Sr. said for some families, the cost of hunting can be too much.
Many families can't afford a snowmobile, let alone the gas and food required to go out hunting for a few days, Ruben said. He is also a member of Paulatuk's Hunters and Trappers Committee.
"The Ski-Doos and boats and stuff is just beyond anybody's ability to purchase," he said.
"Even those that do have them, it's the cost of gas and food just to go out on a hunt now."
Hunting quotas mean there are only so many caribou hunting tags to go around, Ruben added.
He said sometimes, hunters who are unable to go hunting will give their tag to another hunter in the hope of receiving caribou. But Ruben said the cost of a hunting trip means hunters aren't always able to bring back as much as they would like.
"They're not able to help each other as much as they did," he said. "If you got a couple caribou, you take it for your family, whereas before, you could get enough for the family and enough to share around the community."
Ruben said when everyone is struggling, it makes it hard to share.
"People are seeing that and it's getting harder and harder to open your freezers to other family members," he said.
The end result is more than just hunger. People in Paulatuk always shared for survival, and not having the means to help each other is creating a distance between family members and the community as a whole, Ruben said.
"It's affecting the whole social aspect of the community and how they used to share," he said. "It just changed the whole dynamics of the community."
Ruben said more funding for the Community Harvesters Assistance Program through the Paulatuk HTC would go a long way toward helping residents feed their families.
"We want to help those that can't help themselves, give them the ability somehow, through the purchase of equipment and things, they can use to harvest for themselves," he said.
Aggie Brockman, co-chair of Alternatives North, said there are a variety of contributors to the
territory's poverty rate.
Alternatives North and YWCA Yellowknife hosted a workshop titled No Place for Poverty in 2010, which promoted the need for a territorial anti-poverty strategy plan.
The Building on the Strengths of Northerners report stated that even residents with jobs sometimes live in poverty. The unemployment rate in the NWT is currently eight per cent.
"While income and employment are closely related, there are some Northerners living in poverty who receive most or all of their income from paid employment," the report stated.
Brockman said she agreed.
"We know that certainly at least some of the people who are experiencing poverty and living in low income are people who are working," she said. "There probably isn't anywhere in the country that the minimum wage really provides a living wage."
Brockman said low wages and high costs of living can keep families in the territory poor. Minimum wage in the NWT is $10 an hour.
"We know that rents are so very high in Yellowknife, so if people are working at low-wage paying jobs, it's a big struggle to make ends meet," she said. "Not just in Yellowknife but also in small communities."
Brockman said while some steps have been taken to address housing issues, such as the GNWT's new public housing rent scale that was fully implemented last July, they don't do enough to address the problem.
"When people start to earn money, the rent goes up because rent is geared to income if they're in public housing," she said. "That's a real disincentive to work."
Brockman said while the territory might be wealthy, the distribution of that wealth is clustered in areas where non-renewable resource activity is taking place.
"We have really uneven economic development among communities and regions, so we have in some places really high wage earning people who work in the mining industry, but then we have people who are on income assistance or surviving on seniors guaranteed income supplement or old age security," she said. "We have a boom and bust non-renewable resource-based economy."
As part of No Place for Poverty, a workshop held in Yellowknife last October gathered residents from around the territory to talk about an anti-poverty action plan.
One of the ideas for short-term goals was the implementation of a community-specific wage system, which would adjust minimum wages depending on the cost of living in individual communities.
Brockman said Alternatives North has long advocated the system as part of the anti-poverty strategy.
Another possible idea was a Housing First pilot program, which would put priority on making sure all families had housing.
"People really do need the security and safety of their own home in order to be able to make other life changes that allow them to stay in their home," Brockman said. "People see that as something that should be tried here."
The GNWT spends more than $72 million every year on programs and facilities geared toward its lowest-income residents, according to the report.
Money is spent on the territory's income assistance program, public housing subsidies, emergency shelters, as well as seniors assistance programs and transitional rent programs.
The "ripple effect" of poverty shows itself in a variety of ways, the report also stated.
Mental and physical illness increase while a person's overall sense of well-being decreases.
Youth from low-income families are more likely to drop out of high school and continue a cycle of poverty.
"Low graduation rates lead to greater costs in health and social services, education, employment, and law enforcement," the report stated. "Not graduating from high school has also been clearly linked to lower economic productivity and poorer health."
Literacy and subsequent job eligibility also play a large role. The report found that more than 42 per cent of adults in the NWT have a level 1 or level 2 literacy score. Jobs usually require at least a level 3 literacy score in order for an individual to be eligible for employment.
"Literacy is also important, as low literacy contributes to inequalities in education, employment opportunities, income, and, by extension, options for good housing and other essentials for healthy living," the report stated.
Helen Balanoff, executive director of the NWT Literacy Council, said literacy is critical to obtaining and keeping a job today.
"In the past, if you didn't have a high level of skills, you could still get entry level jobs. Nowadays that's not the case," she said. "If you have low levels of literacy you are twice as likely not to get a job, you have fewer choices in terms of the jobs that are available to you and your job is much more likely to be short term so you end up unemployed at some point."
Balanoff said while not all low-income families have low literacy levels, a population with low levels of literacy depends more on social assistance programming overall.
"It's interesting because people with low levels of literacy are more likely to be on income support, so there is a cost to society for low levels of literacy," she said. "We often think of it in terms of the individual, but there is a huge cost to society."
Brockman said during workshops, participants identified a number of ways to help low-income families and communities.
She said pilot projects, such as the introduction of tourism and traditional crafts, were identified as sustainable alternatives to non-renewable resource revenues.
"I think many people see an opportunity to offer something very unique, especially in small communities," she said.
Participants spoke about other successful ventures, such as Acho Dene Native Crafts, based in Fort Liard, which employs about 40 community residents. The store has been in operation since the 1970s and now sells its products online.
Brockman said now that the anti-poverty charter is signed, workshops and meetings will continue in the spring to develop plans of action.
"We'll all be regrouping in the new year an deciding on directions," she said.
