By Roderick Benns

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.

The thing is, Hartwick didn’t have anyone to guide him.

He grew up in poverty, bounced around from town to town across a wide swath of southern Ontario, dependent on where his single mom could find work and affordable housing.

From Bowmanville, where they lived on Mother's allowance payments, to Grasshill, Pefferlaw, Sutton, Sundridge, Burk's Falls, South River, Beaverton, Peterborough and Argyle, Hartwick figured out they had moved 32 times before he turned 21.

Now 38 and living in Peterborough, he says he knows that “poverty was definitely a barrier” when he was growing up with his six siblings. When he thinks about his early dream of being a high school teacher, Hartwick remembers how he felt as reality set in. 

By Roderick Benns

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.”

By Roderick Benns

Opinion

In a recent 2015 paper, Ronald Labonte and David Stuckler argue that the rise of neoliberalism has led to bad economics which in turn has imperiled population health.

They argue that cuts to health and social protection systems under neoliberal nations (like Canada and the US) pose major health risks. As well, structural changes to a new globalized labour market has led to precarious work and rampant under-employment.

Analyses show, say the authors, that the reduction in “social protection spending” by governments were found “to be the main cause of increases in poverty and inequality” in affected countries. By increasing or failing to reduce inequality, they write, any earlier health gains were slowed down or reversed earlier gains. This affected vulnerable populations such as “the poor, rural populations, women, and children.”

By Roderick Benns

A basic income guarantee is not a magic bullet for all forms of economic deprivation in our society, according to a York University professor – but it’s absolutely necessary for the most severe instances of poverty.

Dr. Dennis Raphael, a professor of Health Policy and Management at York University in Toronto, says the people in poverty within the bottom 10-15 percent “suffer profoundly.”

“A basic income is a chance to remove the most egregious forms of poverty,” he says.

By Roderick Benns

A family doctor says basic income policy represents an acknowledgment “of the right to live a decent life.”

Dr. Danielle Martin, a family physician and Vice President Medical Affairs and Health System Solutions at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, says increasing social assistance amounts would not achieve that goal because of the punitive way the welfare system operates.

“Rather than loading all kinds of rules onto people about their eligibility and policing their behaviour,” basic income allows for the living of a decent life that “decouples income support from complex eligibility rules.”

By Roderick Benns, Waterloo Region Record

Social justice thinker R.W. Connell once said: "Statistically speaking, the best advice I would give to a poor child eager to get ahead in education is to choose richer parents."

Connell's advice goes beyond education, though. Income connects not only to education outcomes, but to our very health and wellness. That's why it was heartening to hear federal Health Minister Jane Philpott speak recently of "social inequity" as the greatest barrier to improving health for Canadians. In her recent remarks to the Canadian Medical Association, Philpott cited "social factors" as a key issue that needs to be addressed to improve health.

This is the primary reason we must move forward with a basic income guarantee for Canadians.

By Kate McFarland

BIEN co-founder Guy Standing will be participating in Social Canada Revisited, a conference on the architecture of Canadian social policy, to be held in Kingston, Ontario from August 22-24.

Standing will speak on a panel on income security, which is scheduled for the afternoon of Tuesday, August 23. He’ll be joined by Miles Corak–an economist at the University of Ottawa who researches child rights, poverty, immigration, social and economic mobility, unemployment, and social policy.

By Jon Sanderson  

About 59 percent of Canadians believe basic income is unaffordable, according to a recent Angus Reid poll. It’s not the first time a populace has been dead wrong about the facts.

In the U.S., 42 percent of Americans still think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in spite of blatant facts to the contrary. If our brothers and sisters to the south can be so wrong about something so apparent, we can certainly be just as wrong about something equally obvious.

By Roderick Benns 

Opinion

It might not be surprising to learn that in Tuktoyaktuk, a community of about 900 people on the edge of the Arctic Circle, life isn’t easy.

About 79 percent of the people who live there are Inuit. In 2012, 21 percent of the population received support in the form of income assistance. A full 85 percent live in subsidized housing.

Known simply as ‘Tuk’ to the locals, for generations the village was only accessible by plane in the summer and ice road in the winter. (The village will finally be linked by a two-lane, all-season road by next year – an extension of the Dempster Highway to Inuvik south of Tuk.)

By Roderick Benns

After attending Basic Income congresses both nationally and internationally for about a decade now, the chair of the Basic Income Canada Network (BICN) says the latest Winnipeg, Manitoba congress beats them all in at least one area – the diversity of people attending.

“In the 10 years I’ve been going I’ve never seen anything like this one,” says Sheila Regehr of the recent North American Congress, where about 150 people attended to talk about Basic Income.