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.

In 2015 Claire Williams left her career behind in Vancouver to volunteer at an orphanage in India. When she returned to Vancouver six months later, the issue of homelessness in her city preoccupied her. She wanted to make a lasting impact in the lives of others.

With her co-founder, Frans Tjallingii, the New Leaf Project was born. New Leaf is a simple concept. A one time cash grant of $7,500 is awarded to a person who is homeless, with no strings attached.

In Vancouver the pilot project will run in association with UBC and The Lookout Society next Spring. Fifty participants will be selected to receive the one-time cash grants.

It’s the system of direct cash transfers to an individual where Williams sees parallels with the Basic Income movement in Canada.

“Basic income and the New Leaf Project share the common philosophy that everyone should be able to meet their basic needs,” says Williams.

“We live in a wealthy society and more needs to be done to redistribute that wealth to support people in need,” she adds.

Williams notes that being homeless “is a circumstance, not a character defect,” and the same can be said for those living in resource-poor circumstances.

“Current approaches are failing homeless men and women and their families. Inadequate shelter and meagre social assistance payments trap people in poverty and thwart social mobility,” she says.

She says the direct giving model has been proven to empower recipients to find housing, and purchase goods that improve their lives. It also helps restore a sense of dignity and well-being.

Williams, who spent eight years helping governments, indigenous communities and private sector clients achieve sustainability goals, says direct cash transfers provide income security and the dignity of choice not afforded by traditional responses.

“Both models (Basic Income and direct cash transfers) reinforce the emerging international view that handing control to the individual will yield better results,” she adds.

Williams says Canada’s homeless population continues to grow, despite the billions of dollars spent annually. She and her New Leaf partner, Frans, were convinced that they could leverage their skills to design a different way of doing things.

“It’s a more streamlined approach that would create a positive impact on someone’s life at precisely the time they need it most.

The one-time cash grant of $7,500 is awarded to a person who has been homeless for less than one year. Individuals are carefully screened for program eligibility which includes the age of recipients, length of time they have been homeless, functionality, and employability. The intent is to support participants to the highest degree possible, assess their readiness for change, and reduce the risk of harm.

“Direct cash transfers could be an elegant solution to an intractable social problem,” says Williams.

“There is a cost to doing nothing and that was our call to action. Sometimes you just have to go for it.”

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.

Chris Ballard, the Minister of Housing and Minister Responsible for the Poverty Reduction Strategy for Ontario, says he is hopeful the province’s Basic Income pilot will “put to rest” any doubts people have about how positive a minimum income strategy could be.

Ballard, who is overseeing the Basic Income pilot project initiated by Canada’s largest province, says some of the key things they want to look at from studying the pilot will be Basic Income’s impact on community health, individuals’ health, education, general quality of life, and how the policy might stimulate “attachment to the labour force.”

“How might this help people get back to work? This may be a phenomenal aspect (of Basic Income) where people feel they have a base to be able to get back to work,” Ballard says.

He notes the goal is all about inclusion, trying to ensure there are as many Ontarians actively involved as possible in participating in community life.

“We want to raise people up. We can’t afford to leave anybody behind. We’re actually leaving capabilities behind (by allowing poverty) and so I want to see how transformative a Basic Income can be to a community and to individuals,” he says.

Ballard says there’s “a lot of anxiety in the middle class these days,” given how much employment has changed.

Pointing out that he, too, comes from a blue collar background, he says he understands their anxiousness.

“Everybody is very sensitive with the changing nature of work. It’s not the same world, where you work in the same place for 30 years. We worked so hard as a society to get out of poverty, and then suddenly we’re fearful we might slide back in. Basic Income might provide a fantastic safety net,” he says, to help reduce anxiety.

Ballard says many advocates for Basic Income have heard of the Dauphin, Manitoba experiment, where a program called Mincome helped establish a reliable minimum income for about a third of the people who lived there. Although there were a number of positive outcomes from the data that researcher Dr. Evelyn Forget uncovered many years later, including reduced crime and hospital visits, the pilot was shut down early.

“It wasn’t complete, so it would be wonderful to look at Ontario’s pilot at the end – or even during – and say ‘look it’s working’ or, once and for all, say ‘it’s not working.’ My heart tells me this is a fantastic solution” to dramatically reduce poverty, the minister says.

Recommendations

Retired Senator Hugh Segal recently delivered his requested report to the Ontario government, where he made recommendations about the Basic Income 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, he suggests a top-up of $500 more a month. The pilot is expected to be initiated in April of next year.

The government is consulting widely now, from people with lived experience in poverty, to indigenous communities, business owners, average Ontarians, and experts. Ballard says it’s important that they figure out how to measure success in advance.

The minister says the pilot will also help inform the government about the “impact on local economies” that a Basic Income might have.

“Intuitively, I would think more people working will have more spending money,” he says, and of course it would put more money in the hands of people living in poverty.

Federal Interest

When asked about federal interest in the pilot Ontario is conducting, Ballard said the federal minister is “keen” to see how Ontario will structure their pilot.

Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development for Canada and an economist, “is certainly interested in the pilot, as are my provincial colleagues across Canada,” Ballard says.

“Ontario is leading the way here,” so there is a great deal of interest. He says he will be talking with Duclos regularly and sharing information.

Ballard points out that none other than Elon Musk, founder of Tesla Motors, was musing about the nature of work and pointing out earlier this month that a Basic Income was probably inevitable in the face of greater levels of automation.

“He and others understand the underlying anxiety that people rightly have about the nature of work,” Ballard says.

“And since we’re all well served with an inclusive society…Basic Income might just help all of us feel a lot more comfortable.”

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.

As Ontario gets set to introduce a Basic Income pilot in April of next year, Ayesha Valliani has been a part of a multi-faith approach call to action in support of the policy.

Last month in Toronto, Valliani served on the organizing committee for a Basic Income symposium, which was hosted in collaboration with the Christian-Jewish Dialogue, with very strong interfaith support from across the city.

Organizational partners of the event were the Christian Jewish Dialogue of Toronto, University of St. Michael’s College, and Massey College, with funding from essentially every faith community, says Valliani.

Valliani first heard about Basic Income policy when she was a junior fellow at Massey College. Master of Massey College, the Honourable Hugh Segal, is one of the key voices in the Basic Income movement in Canada. Valliani soon learned about the social policy through Segal’s advocacy.

The intention for the multi-faith dialogue was not to debate the pros and cons of Basic Income for Ontario, Valliani says. Those who participated were already sold on the idea. This included people from the business sector, all three levels of government, anti-poverty advocates, researchers, and representatives from the innovative finance sector.

“There really was an inter-faith call to action,” that day, says Valliani, who notes the symposium was led by Barbara Borak, who serves as executive director of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue.

“This event really brought together faith leaders to speak out about poverty and Basic Income. Faith leaders have an important role to play in advocating for their constituencies but also for these important social issues,” says Valliani.

The multi-faith group’s goal, she says, is to maintain the momentum behind a Basic Income as the pilot begins and carries on over the next several years.

“We’ll be sharing information and listening to others on what it means with the communities on the ground. Our role will be to help translate the community level dialogue back up to government.”

Valliani says there hasn’t been a lot of input from faith communities and from those who have lived experience with poverty, including indigenous communities.

“Hearing from people with lived experience with poverty has to be part of the goal. They have a stake in it, so any good policy has to be informed by those with lived experience,” she says.

During the multi-faith symposium on Basic Income last month, she says the people who actually had lived experience with poverty “spoke eloquently” about what it was like.

“From the day to day struggles, to navigating the various bureaucratic structures…everyone put their phones away and actually listened to them.”

Valliani says she gets the sense that more and more people are realizing that building a strong society is not just attempting to create jobs and then hoping “people will pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make a living.”

“It’s a whole interconnected series of things that will allow someone to live with dignity — or not.”

Segal, who recently delivered his recommendations to the Ontario government about Basic Income, recommends a minimum income of at least $1,320 for a single person. This would bring them up to about 75 percent of the province’s poverty line. For those with disabilities, Segal suggests a top-up of another $500 a month.

“I think most people realize that individuals find personal satisfaction and a sense of self worth when they work,” she says, which is why she is not worried about any possible work disincentives with a Basic Income.

“But in order to do work and be engaged in your community you need a sense of security, even though it’s not a life of luxury,” Valliani says. “The structure of the state impacts how people live.”

She recalls a conversation she had recently with a citizenship judge about dying with dignity.

“He wanted to know why we care so much about dying with dignity, but not so much about living with dignity.”

The work of the multi-faith Basic Income initiative is slated to continue. Valliani says the diverse group of ideologically committed people hopes to develop a set of values and principles that will carry the project forward.

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.

The Kingston Action Group for a Basic Income Guarantee is living up to its name — taking action in the form of a national letter writing campaign directed at the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, Jean-Yves Duclos.

The hope is that a large number of people will simply copy and paste this letter, adding their own name, address, and signature, and send it off to the Minister. (No stamp is necessary when snail-mailing a letter to a member of parliament.) The letter should create additional pressure for the federal government to consider the merits of a Basic Income policy.

The letter begins by acknowledging the Ministry’s work so far, and then quickly pivots to calling for support for a Basic Income.

“I write to applaud your Ministry’s overarching goal to increase economic and social security for all Canadians, especially those among us who are most vulnerable. I am persuaded by the evidence that the most effective policy for realizing this goal will be a Basic Income Guarantee. I am writing to urge you to do all you can to make this happen.”

The Kingston group was careful to situate the Basic Income discussion within a larger context of social supports for all Canadians.

“In tandem with a broad social support system, including affordable housing, childcare, dental care, pharmacare, and programs that assist those with particular needs and vulnerabilities, a progressive basic income would make a crucial difference in the lives of those living in poverty.”

Later in the letter, the Kingston group acknowledges the federal government’s openness to provincial work in this policy area.

“I am pleased that your government has offered to support the governments of Ontario and Quebec with their proposed pilots for a guaranteed annual income. I trust that this will be the beginning of a federal-provincial collaboration that will see a basic income guarantee in place across the country. It is surely not an exaggeration to call this the most important policy initiative since the introduction of Medicare in the 1960s.”

Download the PDF of the letter in its entirety from the Kingston Action Group here.