News release

Provincial Record of Continued Improvements

Community Services

The government of Nova Scotia has not cut welfare, and it stands by its record of continued social services improvements, Community Services Minister Francene Cosman said today.

Mrs. Cosman was reacting to media reports suggesting Nova Scotia was singled out by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in a report released Friday.

The UN report, in fact, does not single out Nova Scotia. Rather, it states that it has heard the concerns regarding changes to the social assistance system in recent years. The report does suggest that Canada as a whole has not done enough to improve living conditions for lower-income Canadians.

"We take this United Nations report very seriously, but we were responding to the problems and issues it identifies long before the report was written," Mrs. Cosman said.

"Nova Scotia has not made the cuts that some other provinces have. And it is important to recognize the many positive things we have done in Nova Scotia."

The fact is, in recent years social assistance rates in Nova Scotia were either increased or maintained for most Nova Scotians receiving assistance.

On April 1, 1998, the Nova Scotia government committed $10 million to increase rates for former municipal assistance recipients. About 70 per cent of the recipients involved saw increases. This new program also provided some 15,000 people with comprehensive Pharmacare benefits and a special needs program for the first time.

The Family Benefits program, which serves single parents and Nova Scotians with disabilities, has not changed.

Nova Scotia has launched a Social Assistance Restructuring Initiative to develop a modernized social assistance delivery system. In the first stage of the process, completed April 1, the province took over responsibility, from municipal governments, for short-term assistance.

The next stage is focused on improving social assistance policy. To that end, the Department of Community Services has been engaged in a public consultation process.

Although the delivery of the National Child Benefit program has been criticized, Nova Scotia is spending all of its reinvestment money on low-income Nova Scotians.

The Nova Scotia Child Benefit goes to everyone with an income less than $16,000, including social assistance recipients. The benefit is paid monthly, and all recipients have received an amount retroactive to July, when the program started.

Nova Scotia's National Child Benefit reinvestment strategy also addresses poverty from another angle, by providing additional services, such as child care, to low-income Nova Scotians.

Contrary to information provided in media reports, all of these National Child Benefit programs have been announced and are under way.

"We have already made considerable improvements," Mrs. Cosman said. "And we plan to do more."