Provincial Pre-Budget Submission 2026
This submission is also available as a PDF document.
Introduction and Context
The Newfoundland and Labrador Anti-Poverty Coalition (NLAPC) is a newly established and growing group of over 40 community organizations across Newfoundland and Labrador. We share a deep commitment to the communities we work with and the people of our province.
We also share a desire to support Government in taking real steps to address the root causes of challenges our communities face - especially poverty. First and foremost, our coalition advocates for raising the income of people living in poverty as a proven means to meaningfully address the intersecting crises facing Newfoundlanders and Labradorians. Lived expertise, stories of everyday struggles, research-based evidence and modelling by policy experts all demonstrate that putting more money directly in the pockets of people living on the lowest incomes is the most effective intervention strategy.
We are pleased to see that the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is preparing to undertake a renewed Poverty Reduction Strategy. Our Coalition will support this work in whatever ways we can.
That being said, Government must not wait for the completion of a strategy to act on poverty. Our communities are suffering, our people are in crisis, and they cannot afford to wait. We urge you to incorporate measures into Budget 2026 that will, at a minimum, help people not slip even farther behind. Those measures are:
1. Index income support to inflation
Our province’s most vulnerable people lose ground every year as prices go up because income support is not indexed to inflation. We know from research that indexing benefits was one of the most effective tools from the previous Poverty Reduction Strategy, developed and administered under the last PC administration. It was then quietly removed, and people’s standard of living immediately and relentlessly started to decline. In 2014, a single employable person received $11,035 annually. In 2024, that amount should have been $14,625 in order to keep up with inflation. The actual amount was only $12,376 – 17% lower than an indexed system would have delivered and the equivalent of having basic support reduced every year.
Aside from financial impacts, indexing to inflation also provides stability and predictability to people who rely on income support to survive and pull themselves out of poverty. While rates have improved in recent years, these increases have been unpredictable from the perspective of recipients. This contrasts sharply with our system for administering the provincial minimum wage, which is indexed to inflation.
In the budget process, we hope you question why one kind of income is being penalized while another is not. Indexing income support is something that is within your power to change in this budget so that low-income households can at least “hold the line” while a comprehensive Poverty Reduction Strategy is developed.
2. Matching the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit
The Government of Canada recently announced the new Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit (GEB). This benefit expands the preexisting HST rebate to provide more cost-of-living relief to low- and moderate-income households. Unfortunately, the dollar value of this benefit is still low – less than half that was proposed by the Affordability Action Council in their original proposal for a GEB.
We urge the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to create an NL Groceries and Essentials Benefit that matches the Canadian GEB dollar-for-dollar, bringing it much closer to the original proposed amount. This intervention would be similar to the NL Disability Benefit (though in that case, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador is providing a two-to-one match to the federal program).
3. Table the All-Party Committee Report on Basic Income in the next sitting of the House of Assembly
As we understand it, this report is complete and its contents agreed upon by all three parties, but has yet to be tabled in the House of Assembly. We would hope that it includes recommendations that could be included in the 2026 Budget. With that in mind, we strongly urge your government to table this report as soon as the House of Assembly resumes sitting and to budget for any recommendations this report makes.
Conclusion
Without a prompt, substantial, and cross-party commitment to reducing poverty, the well-being of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians on low incomes will continue to decline to the detriment of our whole province. Income is a key social determinant of health that has demonstrated and significant downstream effects on educational achievement, workforce participation, prosperity, healthcare costs, and overall well-being. We also know that poverty reduction directly improves the local economy, has positive impacts for crime reduction, social cohesion, and a community’s sense of safety and trust. Our proposed measures will address these issues in a feasible, tangible and meaningful way.
Transformative changes are needed, and our coalition hopes to work closely with the provincial government to help make them happen.
The NLAPC shares Government’s objective of building a Newfoundland and Labrador with the lowest poverty rates in Canada. We believe there is a real opportunity to eliminate poverty entirely. The items in this budget submission would be a small first step.
