Earlier this month, a cross-party MP ‘commons’ committee released an internal report urging the present liberal government to take a serious look into “new types of income support “that do not depend upon someone having a job””.

The nature of work is changing, everywhere in the world. However, existent social security safety nets have been designed and implemented decades ago, when stable, full-time employment was the norm. 

Jamie Swift

In 2011, before Trump, Orban and Brexit, the former International Labour Organization economist Guy Standing wrote a book in which he warned of the rise of a growing class “prone to listen to ugly voices.” Moreover, those strident voices could well erect an influential political platform. Standing argued that the neo-liberal project had, like Dr. Frankenstein, contrived an “incipient political monster” and that urgent action was needed before that creature came to life.^[1]

A co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network, the energetic Englishman called that book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. His 2017 book offers an incisive, well-informed – and sometimes impassioned -- probe of basic income. For Standing, basic income is at once a policy and an urgent social movement, an essential part of the urgent action required to stem the tides of right wing populism.

Basic Income Earth Network

The reading of results from basic income type of experiments is, apparently, dependent on who is reading them. The Ontario present government officials did not think, for instance, that there were particular advantages or benefits from pursuing with the Ontario basic income experiment.

The particulars of the Ontario (basic income) pilot cancellation have been extensively reported on (some examples below), so much so that a new report was published with some evidence of the benefits experienced by more than 400 participants, according to their responses. 

Masslive.com

A bill under consideration at the Massachusetts Statehouse is aimed at testing the idea of a universal basic income.

The long-shot bill would create a pilot program that would include 100 residents in each of three economically diverse cities or towns. At least one of the communities would be located in a rural part of the state.

Andre Picard - Globe and Mail

“Millions of Canadians have to choose between paying for groceries or their prescription medications,” Hassan Yussuf, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, wrote in a recent commentary.

That is one of the most frequently cited reasons for national pharmacare by proponents of a sweeping domestic plan.

First of all, that claim is questionable. It is based on polling data that show 23 per cent of those surveyed said they had experienced difficulty paying for prescriptions. Another study found that 731,000 Canadians borrowed money to pay for their prescription drugs, and some were cutting back on necessities as a result.

Notable reprint

Globe and Mail

Annie Lowrey is a contributing editor for The Atlantic and author of Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World.

Last year, Ontario started distributing cash to thousands of lower-income adults, no strings attached. The recipients did not need to meet any conditions, save for not earning much and having lived in one of five target areas, including Hamilton, Brantford and Thunder Bay, for more than a year. They were free to use the money the government was sending them however they saw fit, whether spending it on groceries and other necessities, saving it for retirement or a degree, or frittering it away. “Our goal is clear,” said Kathleen Wynne, Ontario’s then-premier, kicking offthe effort. “We want to find out whether a basic income makes a positive difference in people’s lives.”

CBC News

P.E.I.'s new Progressive Conservative minority government says it wants to introduce a new social assistance pilot program within the next six months.

Among the many priorities outlined's in Friday's Throne Speech was a commitment to implement a Secure Income Program Pilot. 

The Guardian

Sheffield has moved closer to becoming one of the first UK cities to trial universal basic income after the council formally lent its support to the idea.

Last month, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, confirmed a Labour government would pilot UBI if it won a general election, identifying Liverpool and Sheffield as potential areas for pilot schemes.

CTV News

A cross-party committee of MPs says it's time for the government to take a deeper look at a guaranteed minimum income to help workers caught in the tectonic shifts of the "gig economy."

The MPs' report on declines in traditional, full-time employment in favour of short-term contract work says the government needs to explore new types of income supports "that do not depend upon someone having a job."