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Leaders and Legacies, Basic Income Canada Network join forces against inequality

By Roderick Benns

Leaders and Legacies and Basic Income Canada Network will work more closely together in the coming months to bring news, stories, interviews, advocacy, and information on the benefits of a basic income for all Canadians.

The Basic Income Canada Network (BICN) is a voluntary, non-profit, non-partisan organization that originated in 2008 in affiliation with Basic Income Earth Network at the international level. BICN promotes informed, constructive public dialogue leading to a basic income guarantee in Canada. Leaders and Legacies is a news site for unique, asset-based articles about Canada’s community, provincial, and national leaders, particularly those who are engaged in improving our country through an emphasis on healthy communities, renewable energy, education, citizen engagement, and indigenous Canada.

Given that income is one of the key social determinants of health, a basic income is gaining steam as a viable policy option for consideration as Canadians go to the polls this fall. Within all political parties and at all levels of government there are people who are increasingly supportive of a basic income for all Canadians.

Canada already has a handful of existing programs that approximate basic income. What is needed (and what is fair and just) is to enhance these programs while introducing basic income as a means of genuine income security for those who do not have it. In this sense, Canada already has the beginnings of a comprehensive, basic income security system.

For example, the Canada Child Tax Benefit and National Child Benefit Supplement for children under 18, and Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors, all work reasonably well in terms of boosting income security at the younger and older ends of the age spectrum. These child and seniors’ benefits, which are quite non-conditional (compared to welfare which has punitive rates, rules and conditions), could and should be enhanced in terms of benefit levels and fairness of distribution.

If we turn our attention then to working-age adults as the third general age-related tier of concern, Canada can then work towards a basic income guarantee.

Building on the architecture of social programs we already have in place in order to build a basic income guarantee for everyone is how we will build a more caring, healthy society.

Before the fall, Basic Income Canada Network will unveil substantial new changes to its website, including ongoing fresh content, curated material from around the world on the basic income issue, and a revamped social media experience.

For more information on basic income or to find out how to advocate for this idea, contact Basic Income Canada Network here.

– Roderick Benns is the publisher of Leaders and Legacies.

 

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