Opposition MLAs call on N.S. government to do more to tackle poverty

Nova Scotia's deputy minister of opportunities and social development says there was no talk of increasing income assistance rates in the lead-up to the most recent provincial budget, but there are other measures designed to help combat poverty.

"Ultimately we look at a broad spectrum of affordability options and indexing rates would be one of those," Craig Beaton told reporters Tuesday after an appearance at the legislature's standing committee on community services.

Beaton and other officials appeared at the committee to discuss ways to reduce financial barriers for children and families. The provincial budget includes the indexing of income assistance rates to the rate of inflation, but no other rate increase.

And while opposition MLAs have been critical of that, Beaton and his colleagues noted a suite of measures in the budget intended to help people on assistance get back to work and children of disadvantaged families break the cycle of poverty, all while contending with cost-of-living pressures.

'A big impact'

Beaton told reporters the initiatives, including reducing the HST by one percentage point, indexing income assistance rates and further expanding the universal school lunch program, "will have a big impact on child poverty rates going forward."

The deputy could not, however, provide a time frame for when child poverty rates or the number of people receiving income assistance could begin to meaningfully decline as a result of those measures. About 37,000 people in the province qualify for income assistance, while the province's child poverty rate based on department calculations is about 14 per cent. Those numbers have been steady for the last four or five years, said Beaton.

New Democrat MLA Suzy Hansen told reporters that if the government is not going to make larger increases to income assistance rates, it needs to index other support programs to the rate of inflation.

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During the budget debate process last month, MLAs heard the poverty reduction tax credit has not increased in seven years and the affordable living tax credit has remained unchanged since 2011.

"You would think that you would want to build up these things because we don't want people to be living in poverty," said Hansen. "We want to lift people up out of that."

More help for food insecurity

Liberal MLA Iain Rankin said the government must, if nothing else, look at more support for organizations that provide food to people in need to meet an increasing demand.

"The demand is by far outstripping the supply," he told reporters. "I've never seen anything like that at a local level before."

The PC government has provided several one-time funding increases to Feed Nova Scotia and other support organizations in recent years. Last year, the PCs increased the disability supplement by $300 for people on income assistance who do not qualify for the disability support program.

Tuesday's meeting was also an initial opportunity for MLAs to operate under a new committee time structure.

The PCs used their supermajority in February to change the rules of several committees. While each caucus previously got an equal amount of time to question witnesses, government MLAs gave themselves an additional 10 minutes at the expense of the third-place Liberals. The PCs now get 30 minutes, the New Democrats still get 20 minutes and the Liberals get 10 minutes.

During the second round of questions, the PCs get half of whatever time remains, with the NDP and Liberals sharing the rest.

Rankin said the change allows PC MLAs "to cheerlead a lot more," rather than pushing government officials to do more.

The Tories are hardly the first government caucus whose questions to witnesses could be perceived as less pointed than their opposition colleagues.

Government MLAs look to promote programs

At the beginning of the government MLAs' first round of questioning, Inverness MLA Kyle MacQuarrie told witnesses that questions would provide them the platform to talk about their work.

MacQuarrie told reporters he and his caucus colleagues have the freedom to ask witnesses whatever they want, but he said there are many people who are unaware of government programs and so committees present an opportunity to share that information more broadly.

Viewership while the committee meeting was happening hovered around 25 people, according to the counter on YouTube, although meetings are archived and can be watched after the fact.

MacQuarrie said there is a focus across government on helping the people who need it most.

"I think that we need to acknowledge our successes but never be satisfied," he said.

"I think it's a process of continuous improvement and everyone is working hard to do their best to support people as much as we can. And we're going to keep doing that."