Minus housing costs, Nunavut welfare incomes look like southern Canada’s

Typical unemployed couple with two children in Iqaluit got $29,561 in 2018

This table shows that total welfare incomes in Nunavut are dramatically lower than in the other two territories. But there’s a catch. Unlike the Northwest Territories and Yukon, in Nunavut, public housing costs aren’t counted. (Maytree image)

By Jim Bell

The payments that Nunavut welfare recipients receive each year are dramatically lower than what their counterparts in Yukon and the Northwest Territories receive, a new report shows.

And if you subtract the value of social housing benefits, Nunavut’s annual welfare income in 2018 was close to that paid to welfare recipients living in southern Canada.

The report, titled Welfare in Canada, was issued by a national non-profit anti-poverty organization called Maytree.

For 2018, an unemployed couple with two children living in Iqaluit could expect to receive a total welfare income in 2018 of only $29,561, the Maytree report found.

That’s a little less than in Ontario, where a couple in the same situation would get $30,998 in 2018, or Manitoba, where the figure was $29,918.

However, it’s much lower than welfare incomes paid out that year in either Yukon or the N.W.T.

In Yukon, the jurisdiction with the most generous benefits, the 2018 total for a couple with two children comes to $50,489. In the N.W.T., the total comes to $45,567.

Public housing subsidies not counted

But there’s a big reason for the difference.

About 95 per cent of welfare recipients in Nunavut live in highly subsidized social housing.

So unlike most welfare recipients everywhere else, their housing costs are already paid for.

“Recipients in public housing do not pay fuel, water, sewage, garbage and/or municipal needs, and their electricity costs are heavily subsidized,” the Maytree report said.

“This means that although the totals for basic assistance appear to be much lower than the two other territories, the majority of housing costs have already been paid.”

And those costs are huge. This past March, Terry Audla, the president of the Nunavut Housing Corp., said the average cost per unit of maintaining a social housing unit in Nunavut is $26,700.

Nunavut public housing tenants pay very little of that. Under the Nunavut rent scale, if the annual income of the two primary tenants comes to less than $27,040, the rent is only $60 a month.

Nunavut’s social housing subsidies haven’t been classed as welfare income since 2012, the Maytree report said. But this suggests that if they were, Nunavut welfare incomes for some people could reach well above $50,000 per year.

N.W.T. recipients pay for own housing

That’s different than in the N.W.T. and Yukon, where many territorial welfare recipients live in private market housing and where territorial welfare rates cover those costs.

For example, in the N.W.T., a single employable person on welfare would be expected to pay rent and other housing bills out of their social assistance payments.

“The N.W.T. basic social assistance program pays actual costs of shelter, fuel, and utilities. At the beginning of 2018, the shelter component of basic social assistance or single-person households was capped at $900,” the Maytree report said.

That’s why in the N.W.T., a single employable person would receive welfare income of $22,163, but in Nunavut, the same person would get only $7,782.

Also, the Yukon government pays multiple benefits not available elsewhere, such as a Christmas allowance, a winter clothing allowance, a telephone allowance, a laundry service allowance and a transportation allowance, making its system the most generous among the three territories.

This table shows how the Maytree organization calculated 2018 welfare incomes in Iqaluit. (Maytree image)

The Maytree organization’s annual reports estimate welfare incomes for 2018 in each of Canada’s territories and provinces.

To do that, they add up all components of welfare income—territorial, provincial and federal—paid to four different classes of welfare recipients.

That’s the method they used to show that an unemployed couple with two children living in Iqaluit would have received $29,561 last year.

That figure represents territorial income assistance payments worth $17,160, plus federal child benefits worth $10,881, territorial child benefit worth $660 and a GST credit of $860.

They also found welfare incomes in Nunavut rose slightly in 2018 because of a Government of Nunavut policy change.

That was when the GN scrapped its former food and clothing allowances and replaced them with a “basic allowance.”

So in 2018, the welfare income for a single parent with one child stood at $18,098 in 2018, $695 higher than in 2017, and for a couple with two children, their welfare income was $193 higher than in 2017.

About 38 per cent of Nunavummiut depend on income assistance

In an earlier report, issued last April, Maytree found that that in 2018 there were 4,124 income assistance “cases” in Nunavut, made up of multi-person families and single adults, and 14,500 people were “beneficiaries” of social assistance

That means about 38 per cent of Nunavut’s 2018 population received welfare payments.

South of the three territories, the highest total welfare incomes for 2018 were in the Atlantic provinces.

The maximum annual welfare income for a single parent with one child ranged from $18,240 in Nova Scotia to $23,436 in Newfoundland and Labrador, and for a couple with two children, it varied from $26,505 in New Brunswick to $32,757 in Prince Edward Island, the report said.

Welfare in Canada 2018 by NunatsiaqNews on Scribd

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(7) Comments:

  1. Posted by Bert Rsoe on

    It is time for the Government of Niuinavut to accept that there wiill NEVER be enough jobs for all citizens in Nunavut.
    Our Government should be investigating and implementing a Gauranteed Annual Income program for our residents.

    • Posted by For Real on

      “Never” is a long time. Things could change, but it will take time and initiative. In the mean while, a guaranteed annual income will be necessary to keep the economy from falling apart.

  2. Posted by EVA Q NOAH on

    My single elder mom on her once a month pension is expected to live on 35.00 per day for the whole month.

  3. Posted by Northern Guy on

    Nunavut is the only jurisdiction in Canada with almost 40% of its residents on the dole and yet the QIA and NTI seem hell bent on sinking one of the territory’s biggest economic engines (Baffinland) because they can’t prove that they have used IQ appropriately. Where is this 40% of the population going to find work? It’s not going to be with the various levels of government or the RIAs that’s for sure.

  4. Posted by Putuguk on

    Actually, today if you added up all the vacant jobs in government and all the jobs that are and will be in mining, plus the southern sourced workforce already here that could be displaced, there are enough jobs in Nunavut for us to experience a fairly typical unemployment rate. The main reason that 4 out of 10 people in our territory are on the dole is lack of education and skills. This lack of education and training also results in many people lacking motivation and not understanding the need to join the workforce. Having no opportunity is not our problem in Nunavut. We have simply failed to develop ourselves in response to all that has flowed from the creation of our own mineral rich territory. Instituting a guaranteed income would be useful only to support those lost generations that cannot or will not take advantage of these opportunities. If, starting 35 years ago when we got our own high schools, everybody went to school to completion, we would not be seeing these stats now.

    • Posted by Israel MacArthur on

      Succinctly put put, As usual but the comment about an easily displaced southern workforce is worrying. What do you define as “southern workforce“?

      The non-Inuit population of Nunavut is growing extremely rapidly, and that’s not going to change. The most recent number I heard is that it’s at nearly 17%. These people are not going away, they are part of the Nunavut society, and their numbers will only grow. They need to be integrated into Nunavut society and economy as well.

  5. Posted by Voucher System on

    A single person 7000.00 plus/year minus 10% cash roughly give or take 700.00/year minus rent and power phone bill roughly over 1000.00\per=5300.00/year goes as a voucher of your choice in most communities is coop or northern. They never give any deals to clients although they whole heartily support their store. No deals pampers formulas etc.

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