It appears work on a long-promised poverty reduction strategy for P.E.I. is only just beginning, despite the fact it has been promised since 2015 and despite assurances that work on a strategy was ongoing.
On Tuesday, Family and Human Services Minister Tina Mundy announced government is looking to get Islanders’ input on crafting a poverty reduction strategy.
A new advisory council will be struck to “engage with the public, community groups, not-for-profit and service organizations” and other stakeholders to come up with recommendations for short- and long-term actions, Mundy said Tuesday, adding that public consultations will be held in 2018 to help craft the strategy.
“We’ve been taking a look at gathering information for the last year, we’ve been implementing a lot of government programs to help reduce poverty, so I wouldn’t say we are just starting.”
Family and Human Services Minister Tina Mundy
Mundy rejected the notion this announcement suggests work on the strategy is just getting started.
“No, I wouldn’t say that,” she said in an interview.
“We’ve been taking a look at gathering information for the last year, we’ve been implementing a lot of government programs to help reduce poverty, so I wouldn’t say we are just starting.”
A poverty reduction strategy was promised in the 2015 throne speech and again in the 2016 throne speech.
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Then in April, after The Guardian published a special edition on April 6 focused entirely on poverty concerns, the issue of poverty dominated debate in the legislature for an entire day.
During that debate, Mundy said a social policy person in her department had been appointed to deal specifically with the promised poverty strategy and that this individual had already performed consultations with various individuals, stakeholders and non-government organizations (NGOs).
She said a discussion paper would be released “within the next couple of months.”
More than seven months later, no discussion paper has yet materialized and plans are now in place for the new advisory council to again hold consultations with stakeholders and the public.
Mundy said Tuesday government decided to tackle this issue by trying first to improve targeted programs and services for low-income Islanders – such as increasing the social assistance comfort allowance for seniors in long-term care – before launching into a long-term poverty plan.
That’s because government has come to the conclusion that government alone cannot be solely responsible for dealing with this issue.
“We have been taking steps to reduce poverty, but the actual crafting of a strategy — we just knew that we would have to go deeper and we would have to look at a more collaborative approach to it. Because governments all over the world for hundreds of years have been putting programs in place and we have been investing money, but people are still in living in poverty.”
Opposition MLA Darlene Compton says she questions how much of a priority poverty reduction is to government when work on a strategy promised since 2015 is only just being launched in earnest.
“I’ve got a lot of concerns about this. Are they really serious about this?” Compton said.
“It’s just more talk of a task force or a plan or a strategy. But no action.”
Compton says all of the MLAs hear every day from people living in desperate situations, unable to meet their basic needs, often having to make difficult choices with their limited means.
“People are driving up to the gas station with a jerry can to fill with furnace oil, I see it in the schools where children are coming to school hungry,” Compton said.
“Talk is cheap … is this just another election promise and is it helping anyone who needs housing or needs heat? It’s not. It’s just talk.”
