Ontario MPP, France Gélinas, says a well-designed basic income policy could help women stay home if they want to take care of their aging parents.

Gélinas, an MPP with Ontario’s New Democratic Party (NDP) and a health critic for her party, says women in the 50-65 age bracket often find themselves in the difficult position of placing their mother or father in a long term care home.

“Many women – and let’s be honest, it’s mostly women who would choose this – would love to stay home and take care of their moms and dads,” says Gélinas.

“If they had a basic income it would be possible,” she says, and without any stigma attached to such a decision.

Now, most women can’t afford to lose their jobs in order to do this, she says, and so the business of long term care flourishes.

However, the MPP says it takes $90,000 a year to keep someone in a long-term care bed in Ontario. If someone were to receive even a $20,000 annual basic income it would still be “way cheaper.”

“Will there be a disincentive to work? Well, let’s not kid ourselves. It’s a ton of ‘work’ to keep your mom or dad at home – it’s demanding and tough but many would choose to do it,” she says.

She says she knows “how hard it is for people to place their parents in a long term care home. If you give them another option, they will usually take it.”

The MPP says Canadians hear with too much regularity about abuse that happens in long term care homes. A basic income would help adult children take care of elderly moms and dads for longer.

This would be “phenomenal for health outcomes for the elderly” and women, as the dominant caregivers, “would not be condemned to live in poverty,” she says.

More Money is a Healthy Choice

Gélinas says the body of evidence is solid that for every $1,000 dollars a family gets there is measurable improvement in their health.

A single man getting around $700 per month (the approximate rate of social assistance in Ontario) is “pretty bad,” says Gélinas.

At $1,320 per month – the amount recommended by special government adviser Hugh Segal for a basic income program – “this person will automatically be healthier,” she adds.

“Income has a direct impact.”

Where it becomes worrisome with basic income, says Gélinas, is for someone on the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP). Even with the additional $500 per month that Segal is recommending, she notes there are often many expenses that total more than this for people with disabilities.

For instance, someone in a wheelchair living in rural northeastern Ontario – where Gélinas’ riding is located – automatically means additional expenses. Not only would this person need a larger apartment so they can get around with their wheelchair, she says, but there is also a lack of some medical services in the area. Right now, ODSP will cover the full cost of travel to a larger centre for specialist appointments, including hotels and transportation.

Gélinas points out that like anything with wheels, even wheelchairs give out and need to be replaced, too. “So that extra money per month (from the recommended basic income) won’t be enough” unless there are other accommodations, she says.

As well, she says if the government is looking for cost savings associated with shuttering ODSP offices and workers, she doesn’t think this is advisable.

“I think it would be short-sighted. The ODSP workers, they help a lot and so many people depend on them” for guidance in their day-to-day living.

Gélinas says the NDP will be waiting to see what the Ontario government comes up with more specifically on basic income before endorsing just any version of it.

Progressive Conservative MPP, Julia Munro, says the very nature of work is changing so rapidly that societies are having difficulty figuring out how to respond.

Munro, who is the PC critic for the government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy, says the “nature of work has changed so much.”

“Everything has always been pinned on our work – our employment. It’s the way we have defined ourselves for so long,” she says.

She suggests the rise in at least some of the mental health problems that have been occurring is because of a lack of occupational identity.

“These foundational concepts are in question now,” says Munro.

While acknowledging the starkly different employment landscape, the PC critic says it’s too early to decide definitively if the creation of a basic income guarantee is the way to go.

“It’s possible that a basic income could help. But my view is that we need to look at it in tandem with things like better matching education with available good jobs.”

Munro gives the Ontario government credit for their consultation process on basic income, happening now across the province. She says it has been a “helpful way” for people to get an idea of what others are thinking. Once the government has heard from Ontarians, the plan is to announce more details about the province’s basic income pilot in April.

“Basic income is thought provoking. It’s something to keep in mind, given all the societal changes,” she says.

Munro had already attended one consultation session and was headed to another one in London on Tuesday.

She says one common theme she has noticed is that “younger people don’t have the same feeling towards a job as people have had in past generations.”

“It’s a common thread. They know they won’t be in the same job forever,” as members of past generations were.

Munro says a recent poll by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business reveals that when they asked their members if they supported pursuing a minimum income guarantee, 71 percent said no.

She shares this to illustrate that it’s important to “look at what everyone’s saying” before committing to one direction.

The PC MPP believes the government has a huge undertaking in front of them in simply figuring out where to locate the pilots. Retired Conservative Senator, Hugh Segal, who wrote a report on basic income to offer guidance to the government, suggests a saturation site in southern Ontario, one in northern Ontario, and one in an indigenous community.

She says figuring out which specific communities will be difficult, as will be figuring out how to conduct a control group.

As for party support for basic income, Munro says the PCs are “interested and open to hear about what comes out of the consultation process” and will be more prepared to comment in the spring, after the government releases more details.

Munro says two of the most important questions for governments to answer is ‘what are the jobs of the future and how will they be filled,’ as well as ‘are our students getting what they need to move in that direction?’

The MPP represents the riding of York-Simcoe where there is a mix of runaway construction and affluence, along with pockets of poverty, including a youth shelter.

Fifty years ago, MPP Cheri DiNovo’s father was involved with the Basic Income movement in Canada.

That shows the longevity of an idea that has refused to die, she says, as Ontario and other jurisdictions in Canada and around the world contemplate moving forward with some kind of minimum income guarantee.

While the NDP’s DiNovo is very supportive of the idea of a Basic Income for Ontarians, she is adamant it must bring people over the poverty line and that it be created in tandem with stronger workplace standards.

The new norm of precarious work in Ontario – defined as part-time, contract, or temp work, often without benefits – is “not serving us well,” she says.

“People are desperate. The rich are getting richer, the poor are poorer, and this kind of precarious work is terrifying for people,” she says.

“It’s no way to build a life.”

DiNovo, who serves as the NDP’s critic for Community and Social Services, also points out the “epidemic of poverty” in the province. Toronto is the child poverty capital of Canada with 133,000 children living in poverty, according to a report released last year. She says there are also too many people who are under-housed or homeless.

The MPP says that’s why she favours bringing in a Basic Income that brings people over the poverty line – about $20,000 per year – and then changing the landscape in which businesses operate. This includes making it easier for people to unionize, bringing a halt to so-called ‘scab’ labour, bringing in a minimum wage that begins at $15 per hour, and providing tax incentives for businesses to choose to hire people for full-time, permanent jobs.

“We don’t want a Basic Income to act as a subsidy for bad employers,” she explains.

The MPP isn’t worried about a Basic Income creating any kind of ‘work disincentive.’

“Nobody wants to sit at home making the poverty rate if they can make double that. People do want to work – it’s often what gives them satisfaction. They don’t want jobs that grind someone into the ground or employers that treat them like crap.”

When asked if jacking up the minimum wage, in tandem with a Basic Income and creating new workplace standards, would make Canada less competitive, she says this is the climate of fear that many multinationals try to stoke.

“It’s all based on fear. I’m just not that worried that McDonald’s or Tim Horton’s will pack up and leave” if we have better workplace standards, she says.

She points out that the Nordic nations and Germany have excellent labour standards compared to Canada’s, and that they have “solid economies.”

“Ontario can do better.”

Ultimately, DiNovo says that some form of minimum income is needed in Ontario. But she wants no part of a Basic Income that simply becomes a way for government to do social policy “on the cheap.”

“If it’s a tool in our toolbox then that’s great.”

Retired Conservative Senator Hugh Segal provided the Ontario government with recommendations for setting up a Basic Income in the province. In his report, Segal recommends a monthly payment of at least $1,320 for a single person which is about 75 percent of the province’s poverty line. For those with disabilities, Segal suggests a top-up of at least $500 a month.

The Ontario Liberal government is expected to announce details this spring about the basic income pilot it is setting up. It is currently conducting consultations across Ontario to get feedback on the pilot.

If there’s one thing Prime Minister John A. Macdonald could do exceptionally well, it was to recognize where the political winds were blowing. That’s not a criticism. The most able of politicians help move societies where they actually want to go anyway. Leaders and governments merely ensure a smooth transition, if they are doing their jobs well.

As we get set to celebrate Macdonald’s birthday on Jan. 11, there is a fascinating development occurring on the policy front in Canada that our sage first leader would have already seen coming – the implementation of a basic income policy.

A basic income ensures everyone an income sufficient to meet essential needs and live with dignity, regardless of their work status. We already have a type of basic income for seniors with the Guaranteed Income Supplement that has greatly improved older Canadians’ quality of life. We also have a type of basic income for children under 18, which we know as the Canada Child Benefit. Yet for the vast majority of Canadians in between, nothing like this exists.

Most jobs today are precarious in some way – part-time, temporary, contract, and without benefits. A good education and even a stable work history are no longer a guarantee of economic security. This is impacting our economy, but also our social cohesion.

According to a recent paper from the Mowat Centre (Working Without a Net: Rethinking Canada’s social policy in the new age of work) part-time positions accounted for 89 per cent of job creation in Canada between October 2015 and October 2016, and more than half of all Greater Toronto Area workers are employed in positions with some degree of precarity.

Economist Guy Standing calls this new class of people ‘the precariat.’ As he wrote in a Canadian newspaper just a year and a half ago, the precariat is “the growing mass of Canadians who are in precarious work, precarious housing and hold precarious citizenship: the perpetual part-timers, the minimum-wagers, the temporary foreign workers…” and more.

Standing writes that Canada’s main political parties’ neglect of this new class is “producing a fragmented society in which the old middle class dwindles…and the precariat takes shape in anxiety, alienation and anger.”

The bubbling up of a new class – especially an angry one — is something Macdonald would have recognized and addressed. He would have done so because he would have seen the need, but also because the politician in him wouldn’t have countenanced the electoral threat.

Macdonald was technically a ‘Liberal-Conservative,’ the unwieldy name that was used at the time to describe what we would likely call a ‘progressive’ today. He favoured high tariffs to protect Canadian jobs. He was a pragmatist, not an ideologue. Macdonald, in fact, coined the phrase “progressive conservative.”

Beyond his generally progressive credentials, there is further evidence that Macdonald, today, would support a basic income policy and deal with the precariat head on.

As Richard Gwyn writes in Nation Maker, Macdonald had a particular interest in the Salvation Army, a church well known for its effort to help the poor. What Macdonald was doing through his visits and networking with the church, writes Gwyn, “was learning about the effects of the depression on Canada’s new class of urban workers.”

This shows that Macdonald, who was no stranger to financial difficulty, had a deep interest in understanding how a new emerging class would cope. He wouldn’t have wanted an entire class of people in economic and social difficulty, given that Canada, at its inception, was a largely egalitarian nation of modest means.

This spring, Ontario kick-starts a basic income pilot program in Canada’s largest province. Last year, Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard tasked François Blais, minister of employment and social solidarity, to figure out how a basic income might work there. In Prince Edward Island, all parties recently supported a motion to request the federal government use their island province to conduct a pilot.

As Canada turns 150 this year, there is real momentum for this initiative and a sense that basic income is a policy prize worth fighting for. Our first prime minister would have heard the precariat’s cry for fairness. Our current PM must not let it go unanswered.

Roderick Benns is the author of Basic Income: How a Canadian Movement Could Change the World. He is also the author of The Legends of Lake on the Mountain: An Early Adventure of John A. Macdonald. This article originally ran in the Waterloo Record.

For too many years Canada has danced around what is perhaps the central issue in social policy development. What are the most basic needs of Canadian citizens?

If one were to read a recent report from the Mowat Centre called Working Without a Net: Rethinking Canada’s Social Policy in the New Age of Work one wouldn’t think it was money.

The new report written by Sunil Johal and Jordann Thirgood attempts to make sense of of the real problems facing labour markets in a thorough way, particularly the increasingly precarious nature of work. However, the authors curiously limit themselves to six social policy areas – Employment Insurance and training, pensions, healthcare, child care, housing and employment standards. The report then does a pretty good job of showing how these particular programs are not meeting the challenges facing the labour market.

The problem with their selective focus is that it leaves out an obvious contender for retooling social policy – income transfers. Wouldn’t basic needs include a Basic Income for Canadians? This is vital to deal with increasing inequality and poverty, coupled with decreasing opportunity.

In fact, one of the challenges they pose asks “how we best move forward with a society that provides all citizens with basic needs…”

The paper seems to accept counter-intuitively that the basic needs of citizens are dominated by childcare, healthcare and affordable housing. These are called the foundational programs that the report suggests needs strengthening. What about adequate incomes with which to buy the necessities of life like food, clothing, transportation and more — things not directly provided by public programs?

Some recognition is given to selected transfers, such as reforms of Canada Pension Plan and the Guaranteed Income Supplement, the Canada Child Benefit and the Working Income Tax Benefit, which should be “reviewed for adequacy and coverage.”

Some lip-service is also provided to the inadequacy of social assistance. But it is very selective. Only once in the entire report do the authors even ponder transformational change when they discuss the issue of a guaranteed annual income (or Basic Income) and then only dismissively.

Depicting this Basic Income as a payout to every Canadian of $15,000 each per year (i.e., $500 billion based on a population of 33 million) is nonsensical. Almost no one is arguing for a fully universal Basic Income in that sense. However, a Basic Income that is there to ensure people do not drop egregiously below the poverty line – say $15,000 or even $20,000 per year – and with a tax-back rate of 30-50 per cent is perfectly affordable. We would do this by rearranging the existing system of non-refundable and refundable tax credits. As well, there will be substantial savings by collapsing the inadequate welfare system. All of this can be done without reducing spending on other programs.

A Basic Income is the most cost-effective way of addressing both low incomes and volatile earnings, and would be a complement to affordable housing, health care and childcare, not a substitute. Indeed, it seems to be an ideal instrument for dealing with the problems of precarious employment so well outlined in the first half of the Mowat paper.

The paper makes the absurd claim that a Basic Income “would become a more realistic alternative in a job-free future, where capital resides in the hands of the few, who are taxed to provide for the needs of the many.”

The need for a Basic Income Guarantee cannot wait for such an unlikely future. It is important for policy makers and think tanks not to fall victim to what Professor Deborah Stone calls ‘path dependence.’ This is the idea that early policy decisions establish institutions and procedures that perpetuate themselves, making it difficult to find other solutions or even to adjust original policy at all.

Canada can’t afford to stay on the same path. We can’t afford a lack of creativity in social policy any longer as the inequality gap widens. The most basic needs of all Canadians are not being met and a Basic Income would address this challenge head on.

— Robin Boadway is an economist at Queen’s University and is former editor of the Canadian Journal of Economics. Roderick Benns is the publisher of Leaders and Legacies and is the author of Basic Income: How a Canadian Movement Could Change the World.

Although he counts himself lucky not to have experienced poverty firsthand, the Green Party leader of Prince Edward Island, Peter Bevan-Baker, has many friends who haven’t been as fortunate.

When he rose in the P.E.I. Legislature last week and got all-party support for a Basic Income project to be set up on the island, he may have had them in mind when he introduced his motion. The Legislature agreed unanimously to have the province work with the federal government in the hope of running a Basic Income pilot on the island.

Bevan-Baker’s motion had its origins in the island’s May 2015 election. At an all-party leaders’ debate, it was the Green Party leader then, too, who brought up the issue, given it is prominently featured in all Green Party platforms across Canada. What he didn’t expect during that debate was to hear widespread openness toward the idea.

“I discovered, to my delight, that they all thought Basic Income was at least worthwhile exploring. It was a pleasant surprise, this unanimity.”

Bevan-Baker brought it up at least on “a dozen occasions” in the Legislature when opportunities arose. “There were all sorts of possibilities to do so, since Basic Income has the potential to make an impact across all departments,” says the Green Party leader.

He says if a Basic Income were to go into effect, it would have far-reaching ramifications. The obvious one is the virtual elimination of poverty.

“It’s the right thing to do from that standpoint.”

But there are far greater effects it may have to create a thriving society, he notes.

“It would remove the tremendous stress that people feel. It would provide people with enough income to meet their basic needs. It would help with the great mental stresses that people endure.”

Bevan-Baker says there are tremendous collective benefits, and that it’s important to go beyond considering only the economic when measuring. Everything from reduced health care costs, fewer law and order issues, increased civic participation, and better educational attainment are but a few areas of life that should be measured under a Basic Income to see if these improve.

“I believe a pilot project will show that Basic Income is going to improve the collective well-being of our society.

Now, the ball is in the federal government’s court. They would have to work out a partnership with the maritime province in order to make it happen. So far, there’s been no word whether or not federal involvement might happen.

In Ontario, which is embarking on its own Basic Income pilot, Ontario’s Minister Responsible for the Poverty Reduction Strategy, Chris Ballard, told Leaders and Legacies that Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development for Canada, “is certainly interested in the pilot, as are my provincial colleagues across Canada.”

When it comes to P.E.I., Bevan-Baker says he met with Family and Human Services Minister Tina Mundy personally many times and he knows she has had discussions with her federal counterparts.

The Green Party leader says this is “an enormous opportunity for the government” for an issue that has widespread momentum across Canada.

“There’s a compelling case for involvement. We don’t even need to use the whole island. We could use smaller pockets, different communities with a rural-urban mix and…it would be a drop in the bucket in federal terms.”

Bevan-Baker says islanders love to refer back to that historically-important week in 1864, when the so-called Charlottetown Conference marked the beginning of discussions to create a united Canada. To this day, P.E.I. is considered the ‘birthplace’ of Canada. They like to draw all sorts of parallels, he says, when there’s a chance for the small province to do something grand.

“But that parallel is well drawn here. It would be lovely symmetry if we were the place to give birth to a Basic Income. We’re less than half of one percent of the national population. We are our own jurisdiction. You can do a really solid pilot project here.”

Bevan-Baker came to Canada at age 23, having grown up in a middle class family from the highlands of Scotland. They didn’t have a lot of material possessions, and he points out that he had “a real sense of the value of things growing up,” which helped to shape him.

Politically, it is that sense of what matters in people’s lives which may have served Bevan-Baker well here — especially if his role in kick-starting a Basic Income project for P.E.I. soon bears fruit.

When he was a young man, just leaving high school, Jason Hartwick always pictured himself in front of a classroom. He saw himself as a high school teacher, helping to inspire young people and to guide them along their lives’ paths.

There are “two sources of benefit” inherent in a Basic Income Guarantee, according to the executive director of the famous Mincome project in Winnipeg and Dauphin, Manitoba.

Ron Hikel, who served as executive director of Mincome from 1972 to 1977, says the first source of behavioural influence is the simple no-strings-attached receipt of the money itself. The second is “the psychological certainty of regularly having enough to live on.”

Hikel was speaking to Basic Income advocates at a meeting in Peterborough recently when he made the remarks. He says the psychological security of having money from month to month could “significantly reduce both individual and family anxiety.”

(In the current welfare system, recipients must submit to a high degree of invasive questioning, fill out copious amounts of paper work, and then face entrenched stigma – all for a much smaller amount of money that falls well below that of the poverty line.)

“There’s no doubt a properly designed and administered Basic Income could influence people’s lives for the better,” says Hikel.

“We’ve seen a significant increase in mental health challenges and I’m convinced that the certainty of income could lead to better physical and mental health,” Hikel explains.

The former Mincome executive director notes that of all the social determinants of health – those factors that shape the health of Canadians through the living conditions they experience – income is the most important enabler on this list.

Hikel points out that, at the level of the total population, those who have higher incomes are healthier, while those who are the most unwell in society have lesser ability to pay for health care. “And that’s why a general health system operating on exclusively private market terms is neither fair nor viable.”

Ontario’s new pilot on Basic Income

Retired Conservative Senator Hugh Segal’s report on a minimum income for Ontario was released recently, which will see Canada’s largest province set up a multi-year pilot to measure its effectiveness beginning in April, 2017.

In the report to Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government, Segal recommends a monthly payment of at least $1,320 for a single person which is about 75 percent of the province’s poverty line. For those with disabilities, Segal suggests a top-up of $500 more a month.

Hikel says that he would expect to see that the present rate of increase in health care system cost slowing after the introduction of a Basic Income, just as demand for care in Dauphin declined, according to research by economist Dr. Evelyn Forget. He says he would expect better population health in Ontario, too, after a basic income was in place in the province.

Hikel notes that in Dauphin — where Mincome helped establish a reliable income for about a third of the people – data indicated crime also went down during the experiment, including domestic incidences.

He says the big challenge for Ontario will be to get the design of the pilot right, with special emphasis on a top-notch IT system to calculate and deliver regular payments on time and in the right amounts for each family.

With Canada’s 150^th birthday year less than two months away, Hugh Segal is calling for the federal government to get involved in Ontario’s pilot project on Basic Income as a nation-building opportunity.

Retired Conservative Senator Hugh Segal’s long awaited report on a guaranteed annual income was released last week, which will see Canada’s largest province set up a multi-year pilot to measure its effectiveness.

In the report to Premier Kathleen Wynne’s government, Segal recommends a monthly payment of at least $1,320 for a single person which is about 75 percent of the province’s poverty line. For those with disabilities, Segal suggests a top-up of at least $500 a month.

The retired senator notes that while the federal government’s involvement is “not specifically within the remit of an Ontario pilot, it is nevertheless recommended that the federal government consider partnering with any willing province on any Basic Income pilots now being considered or contemplated.”

Segal writes that “a government in Ottawa that is committed to poverty reduction could see a meaningful nation-building opportunity in moving forward with a Basic Income project for the country as a whole.”

The pilot does indeed have worldwide ramifications, given Ontario’s sheer size, both in area and in population. The province is more than one million square kilometres — an area larger than France and Spain combined and it is the largest province by population in Canada, with more than 13.5 million people. This single province generates 37 percent of the national GDP of Canada.

Segal’s recommendation to the government would include strong work incentives built into the Basic Income pilot’s design. He told CBC’s Carol Off that in his vision for the program, “people would be able to go out and earn as much as they like and the normal tax rates of 20 percent or 30 percent would apply.”

“Once they reach an amount where they’re earning as much every month as they’re getting from the actual basic grant, then they would be taxed like the rest of us who earn enough to live without any assistance,” he tells Off.

To read Segal’s full report, click here.

Retired Conservative Senator Hugh Segal’s long awaited report on Ontario’s Basic Income pilot has been released, where he emphasizes the need to understand the full costs of poverty before fairly evaluating the new pilot.

Segal recommends a monthly payment of at least $1,320 for a single person which is about 75 percent of the province’s poverty line. For those with disabilities, Segal suggests a top-up of at least $500 a month.

The retired senator says any pilot project must understand poverty’s costs, not only in the present welfare and disability payments, “but also in terms of added pressures on our health system, and the Ontario economy as a whole, through its impacts on economic productivity and existing government revenues.”

He writes that measurable outcomes (from the pilot) should include the number of primary care visits (for psycho-social, mental and physical health), the number of emergency department visits, and prescription drug use.

Careful examination of participants’ life and career choices should also be made over the duration of the pilot by participants, “such as training, family formation, fertility decisions, living arrangements, parenting time.”

Other notes of interest for researchers should include education outcomes for participants and their children, and the nature and number of courses taken by adults, he says.

Work behaviour, job search and employment status

Segal says the public’s desire to understand how a basic income might affect work behaviours makes this area important to track, too.

According to Segal’s paper, measurable outcomes with regard to work behaviours should include:

• the number of hours of paid work
• the number of jobs held
• the income earned on the labour market
• the intensity and length of job search activities.

“The impact of a Basic Income on labour market participation remains one of the main concerns of the Canadian population,” he says, pointing to an August 2016 Angus Reid Institute poll, showing 63 percent of the country’s population believes that a Basic Income would discourage people from working.

Segal notes the introduction of a Basic Income pilot for individuals currently receiving Ontario Works would provide additional incentives to join the workforce, by allowing them to keep a substantial part of their earned income in addition to their Basic Income.

“…a careful evaluation of the impact of a Basic Income on people’s decisions regarding work, such as whether to work or not, their weekly hours worked, their job search activities, and the number of jobs they hold, is critical.”

The retired senator says the evaluation of the pilot should seriously explore how labour market behaviours vary across demographic groups, according to the amount in benefits received, and the rate at which they are taxed back, as income earned in the labour market increases.

— More analysis of the Segal report on Basic Income to come.