Huffington Post

Liberal MP Julie Dzerowicz says her push for basic income has traction among her caucus colleagues, including a number of cabinet ministers. 

Dzerowicz introduced a private members’ bill this week, Bill C-273, which calls on the federal finance minister to study guaranteed basic income models and develop a national strategy to evaluate how a program could be implemented in Canada. 

“I will tell you that I do know that there’s cabinet ministers that are very supportive of basic income,” the Toronto MP told HuffPost Canada during a virtual meeting availability to discuss her bill Thursday. There’s a “broad swath” of Liberal caucus members who support the idea, Dzerowicz said. “I don’t want to give you the number, but it’s quite a few.”

Hugh Segal

Toronto Star

A recent report of the British Columbia Expert Panel on Basic Income prepared over two years by three economists, two from B.C. and one from Alberta, has given encouragement to long standing opponents of a basic income.

In some ways, however, the very nature of their sixty-five recommendations for program changes in income security and related programs in B.C. undercuts the anti-basic income orientation of the report itself.

The analysis and recommendations of the report do appear to have the authors bumping into themselves while coming around the corner.

Andrew Coyne

The Globe and Mail

The concept of a basic income – combining several existing income and social supports into a single, income-tested but otherwise unconditional cash benefit – has been debated for more than 200 years.

It has drawn support, and criticism, from across the political spectrum, attacked or praised as either utopian socialism or minimal-state libertarianism. But has the whole debate just been settled?

You’d think so, to judge from some of the responses to the recent report of the British Columbia Expert Panel on Basic Income. It’s not hard to see why. The report’s authors are all highly regarded economists. 

Jamie Cooke

The year 2020 has demonstrated why the expression “May you live in interesting times” is seen as a curse. As the world reeled under the loss of life, economic impacts and the removal of opportunities many of us have taken for granted, the desire to move back to more stable times has appeared attractive.

Yet the chaos we continue to live through also offers us a chance to reimagine the world we live in — to challenge the dominant presumptions we entered the pandemic with, and to implement new policies to ensure we build forward better.

We welcome the opportunity to contribute to this budget. We are making income security proposals towards the goal of economic recovery for all.

It is a tragic reality that, despite lofty rhetoric, people are being left behind and pushed out of the economy. Their numbers are growing due to the financial strain of the pandemic combined with the cracks in Canada’s social protection systems that COVID-19 has exploited. People who thought they were middle-class are now facing hardship they never imagined. For people disadvantaged long before the pandemic hit, the situation continues to worsen. Income and wealth inequality are widening. Trauma is building. That is not the path to a better future.

All orders of government face mounting social and economic problems and costs if they don’t reverse these trends. Waiting is dangerous.

The federal CERB instinct was correct—financial crisis requires cash. Its design had flaws but they are solvable. The knowledge gained through programs and studies over the years can be used to design a simpler, unconditional basic income guarantee that is available to Canadians when and as they need it. It prevents financial challenges from becoming full-blown crises, enabling people to more readily transition to better situations in their health, education, family, work, and community life. It supports local economies, where income is spent and where businesses need customers to survive. It also acts as a stabilizer and stimulus for the larger economy. 

iPolitics

Support for a basic income may be shifting from one end of the country to the other.

Four senators are the latest leaders to say they’re in favour of a guaranteed, livable basic income on Prince Edward Island, with Ottawa’s help.

A special all-party committee of the P.E.I. legislature urged the provincial government late last year to begin negotiating with Ottawa for money to test-drive a guaranteed basic income.

Three senators from P.E.I. — Sens. Diane Griffin, Brian Francis, and Mike Duffy, as well as Ontario Sen. Kim Pate — sent a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and P.E.I. Premier Dennis King last week calling not just for a pilot program, but a nationwide guaranteed basic income, starting on the island.

Thunder Bay Newswatch

It will likely come as no surprise to recipients of the now-cancelled Ontario Basic Income Pilot (OBIP) program that a study has found the program was significantly helpful.

Its benefits, however, were reversed when the project was axed by a new government.

A Lakehead University social work professor led a research team that investigated the impacts, and is now making its findings public.

The planned three-year pilot was announced by the provincial government in 2017 and was subsequently rolled out in several communities including the Thunder Bay area.

SocialCanada.org

On January 18, I participated in a webinar organized by the office of Senator Kim Pate, for politicians and stakeholders interested in a Basic Income for Canadians. Several well-known and highly-respected speakers took part, including former senators Hugh Segal and Art Eggleton, Murray Sinclair,  Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Graham Fox, CEO of the Institute for Research on Public Policy, Professor Evelyn Forget, and the Chair of Basic Income Canada Network, Sheila Regehr.

Everyone endorsed the concept and discussed how it could be implemented, pointing out that it would help to “build back better” after the pandemic. 

Sheila Regehr

On January 28, the B.C. panel on basic income released its 500-page report with 65 recommendations; it does not support basic income as a central pillar of its plan.

The Basic Income Canada Network is listed among organizations that the B.C. panel consulted. We shared our expertise and the experiences of people who had been in the Ontario pilot. We provided them with our own detailed analysis and modelling in Basic Income: Some Policy Options for Canada. 

Our principles make it clear that we have never claimed basic income to be a panacea, that it works in synergy with services and labour legislation. We stress that everyone should be able to meet basic needs and live with dignity. None of this is reflected in their report.