CBC News

New Brunswick Green Party Leader David Coon would like to see a basic income guarantee replace the province's social assistance program which has led to "government enforced poverty."

"It's a different kind of social assistance system, that's for sure. It's simpler," Coon said in an interview with Information Morning Moncton. 

"It doesn't have the clawbacks. It doesn't have these awful rules that really bind people in poverty and prevent them from getting ahead in any way."

Business Insider

Mayor Michael Tubbs of Stockton, California, was just 28 years old when he launched a pilot program that gives free money to his city's residents.

In February, the city began distributing $500 monthly stipends to 125 residents who live at or below the median income line (about $46,000 annually). The stipends are a test of basic income, a policy approach that would essentially pay people simply for being alive.

Lindsay Advocate

Canadians are marching for Universal Basic Income on Oct. 26 as Toronto and cities around the world join forces – and it won’t be just Toronto, as people from former pilot centres Lindsay, Hamilton, Thunder Bay and other areas will also be taking part.

The event will be held in front of the Ontario Legislative Building at Queen’s Park, from where participants will march and hear from champions of a universal basic income in Canada.

Thunder Bay Newswatch

Ruth Westcott says Ontario’s now-cancelled basic income pilot project changed her life.

It’s why she’s helping to lead a grassroots effort to ensure the program is available not only in Ontario again, but across the country.

Lifting people out of poverty must become a national priority, she said, speaking at city hall on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

Thunder Bay Newswatch

Thunder Bay-Superior North candidates tackled a number of hot-button issues on Wednesday night as they met the electorate at a debate hosted by the Thunder Bay Chamber of Commerce.

Topics ranged from climate change to homelessness to Indigenous issues in the lone local forum to date to include all six candidates in the race.

The election hopefuls,  Liberal incumbent Patty Hajdu, Conservative Frank Pullia, the NDP’s Anna Betty Achneepineskum, Bruce Hyer of the Green Party, Youssef Khanjari of the People’s Party of Canada and Liberatarian Alex Vodden, didn’t agree on much, but they did all agree that a basic income guarantee of some sort was something to work toward.

Basic Income Earth Network

The Ethics and Economics of the Basic Income Guarantee (2005) edited by Karl Widerquist, Michael Anthony Lewis, and Steven Pressman, published by Publishing is availed in a free version at this link.

This book available because most publishers allow authors and editors to post early version for free on their personal websites. That means it has lots of typos and other problems. But it’s a reasonable approximation of the final version. Please see the published version if you can. It’s available at university libraries.

People's Policy Project

Max Sawicky has a piece in Jacobin that again repeats the clearly incorrect claim that it would be impossibly expensive to provide everyone in the country a significant cash grant each year.

So what’s wrong with the UBI? In a nutshell, if it’s universal, it can’t be basic, and if it’s basic (provides a decent income floor), it can’t be universal. The US population exceeds 300 million. If the UBI benefit is $10,000 a year (less than Yang’s), you can do the math. The entire federal budget is about $4.4 trillion.

The Lindsay Advocate

As a federal election draws nearer the Basic Income Canada Network (BICN) is urging all federal candidates to consider a basic income as a game-changing solution to income insecurity.

The letter to all federal candidates begins by tackling the issue of financial insecurity head-on.

“As the 2019 federal election approaches, many issues will be debated. A great many of them are linked to income insecurity, which manifests itself in the form of costly symptoms, like anxiety, illness and societal unrest. If the underlying problem is about income, however, then the solution must be, too – or it will not get better.”

The Star

A year after Doug Ford broke his first election promise by axing the province’s basic income pilot project, the future remains uncertain for Ontarians struggling to make ends meet.

The three-year, $150-million experiment was studying whether unconditional cash payments are a better way to support vulnerable workers and improve health and education outcomes for people living in poverty, including those on social assistance.

With a sample size of 4,000 adults in three test sites — Hamilton-Brant, Thunder Bay and Lindsay — and another 2,000 acting as a control group, it was one of the largest and well-designed studies of its kind.