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Broadbent says Maytree will explore a rights-based approach to inequality

By Roderick Benns

It’s time to take a rights-based approach to inequality, according to Alan Broadbent, chairman and founder of Maytree and co-founder of the Caledon Institute of Social Policy.

Signalling this is the path that Maytree — a private Canadian charitable foundation committed to reducing inequality in Canada — will soon explore, Broadbent says “one has to ask if governments are doing as much as they could to protect citizens from the vagaries of the economy.”

“There are a growing number of lawyers and academics that are interested in this approach,” Broadbent tells Leaders and Legacies.

Most constitutions before the 20th century – such as in the U.S. and Canada — protected rights like free speech, freedom of religion, and mobility, without creating rights to decent living conditions. However, in the last half of the 20th century, the trend in both international documents and in most constitutions, is to create rights to food, shelter, and other economic rights.

For example South Africa’s constitution of 1996 includes economic, social and cultural rights and the top court of the country has heard challenges that is testing the social-political realities of the country.

Broadbent says Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is pertinent here. Section 7 of the Charter reads: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”

Increasingly more groups and individuals are “using this as a wedge to get governments to take more seriously the issue of economic rights.”

“When you look at some of these underfunded programs in disrepair,” he says, it’s not surprising.

He says Canada needs to do a much better job of “providing income supports for people to allow them to live their lives with dignity.”

“We have a number of instruments in place now, things like Employment Insurance, Canada Pension Plan, the Working Income Tax Benefit – and they’re all underfunded. We need to fix them.”

Broadbent says when the child tax benefit was brought in during the mid-1990s, it was funded at about 20 percent of what was recommended. Today, with improvements, it’s at about 80 percent of the recommend amount. The working income tax benefit, for the so-called ‘working poor’ is only funded “at about 20-25 percent of what it should be,” says Broadbent.

“Employment Insurance is a shambles. It’s applied so unevenly across country – in fact, it’s hard to collect it at all in Ontario. It needs to be fixed.”

Broadbent says there is also growing consensus on changes needed for the public pension plan and that support is building for Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne’s proposal. This would see some kind of increase in the mandatory savings by Canadians, with details to be announced this spring.

While Broadbent does not support a basic income guarantee, citing its complexity and its potential for political divisiveness, he says he is strongly in favour of fixing the targeted benefits that currently exist.

“In my opinion, this is more possible to get done.”

On the other hand, Broadbent thinks it’s great that people with profile like former Conservative Senator Hugh Segal are pushing for a basic income guarantee.

“It’s worth talking about it because it highlights the issues. I know Hugh well and admire him and I would never tell him to stop talking about this, because it creates pressure for governments to do something.”

It’s Broadbent’s view, though, that “it’s important to choose instruments that have a higher potential for adoption.”

One of the most important things for Canadian society to adopt, according to Broadbent, is a viable definition of who is really poor in Canada.

“I don’t think among policy makers that we have a very clear idea of who is poor,” with too many measurements but no single agreed-upon one.

“We have this idea that there is a massive section of poor people in generational poverty. I think the facts are that we have a very small cadre of chronically poor people in Canada.”

Broadbent says that of the people who are poor, about half have disabilities, which might include alcoholism or drug abuse.

“They have trouble attaching to the labour market in a full-time, remunerative way.”

Therefore, he says disability supports are one way to help them. The other major cadre of chronically poor people are single parents, “usually single mothers.”

“Part time, low wage jobs doom them to poverty, which should be addressed. But we have very few people who are chronically poor in Canada.”

Broadbent notes that what happens, often, is that on a one-time basis, people will dip below the poverty line, through some kind of bad luck.

“For instance, perhaps there is a marriage break-up or an illness. So once we have an understanding of who is poor, any why, it helps take away any moral judgements.”

He says in the case of single mothers, perhaps society can help single mothers in the labour market with good, targeted childcare. For people with disabilities, their benefits could include getting them the help they need to live decently.

 

 

 

One comment

  1. That’s disappointing to see Mr. Broadbent not support basic income because of assumptions that it is too complex and politically divisive. Similar things were said about universal health care, old age security, pensions, and every other progressive social program we now have–the very programs that define Canada as a caring country.

    A well-designed basic income guarantee would be far simpler than the tangled web of programs we have now, and already two of Canada’s federal political parties have support for some type of basic income guarantee written into their party policy.

    Let’s make policy decisions based on soundness of the idea, its potential for public good and evidence, not assumptions about how hard it would be to get implemented.

    John Green
    Basic Income Waterloo Region

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