PETITION TO THE GOVERNMENT OF SASKATCHEWAN

We, the undersigned residents of the Province of Saskatchewan, wish to bring to your attention the following:

That the poverty line for a single person in Saskatchewan is approximately $22,500 a year;

That a person on the new Saskatchewan Income Support (SIS) program gets $10,320 a year, less than half that amount;

That a person on the province’s most generous income assistance program, Saskatchewan Assured Income for Disability (SAID) program, gets on average $17,000 a year, still well below the poverty line;

That the government of Saskatchewan is legislating poverty;

That, through eight months of COVID, the only additional support provided by the Government of Saskatchewan to people on income assistance was a one-time payment of $50;

That British Columbia, the Yukon, and the North West Territories have fully exempted the CERB benefit from claw back;

That the Government of Saskatchewan is the only province west of the Maritimes that has no CERB exemption;

That the federal government says it doesn’t want the CERB money back—it says let them keep it;

That in clawing back CERB payments, the Government of Saskatchewan is taking money from poor people and putting that money into its own coffers.

We, in the prayer that reads as follows, respectfully request that the Government of Saskatchewan:

Stop clawing back money from those on Saskatchewan Income Assistance programs who received federal CERB payments;

Return to those on Saskatchewan Income Assistance programs CERB money already clawed back;

and Significantly increase Income Assistance rates as a first step toward raising them above the poverty line.