Roderick Benns

It was not the kind of Valentine’s Day gift supporters of basic income were looking for.

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice Divisional Court says the court has no authority to force the PC government to continue funding the Ontario Basic Income Pilot program.

The Star

Doug Ford, premier of Ontario, is poised to kill one of the world’s most ambitious and sophisticated universal basic income pilot projects (UBI), cutting a year off its intended three-year duration. The decision was made last July, soon after the Ford government came to power, and is effective March 31.

Ontario’s new government is able to do that because the UBI project, and its promise to reinvent social assistance and give poor people greater incentive to join the paid workforce, is scarcely known or understood.

Roderick Benns

While the federal government may be considering the merits of a basic income for Canadians, those participating in the Ontario pilot know already how it was changing their lives for the better.

In fact, there were four key ways basic income directly affected people’s work lives, according to survey information – more learning and education; affordability of transportation; starting or maintaining a business; and childcare.

Roderick Benns

OBIP Chronicles — Finding affordable housing in Ontario hasn’t been easy for decades. For people collecting basic income in Lindsay, Hamilton area, and Thunder Bay area, the pressures they were facing with housing costs were lessened with the new benefit they were receiving, although all of that is ending in March with the cancellation of the Ontario Basic Income Pilot.

Roderick Benns

Study results from the Ontario Basic Income Pilot’s baseline survey have now been released, revealing the stories of participants were hoping to break the cycle of poverty, find better jobs and opportunities, stabilize their housing, and improve their health and well-being.

The baseline survey was conducted by an arms-length, independent evaluation team led by St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. Under the initial agreement signed by enrollees, the descriptive statistics were to be made available to pilot participants who requested the survey results (no personal information was included).

On the May day they learned they had been accepted into the province’s basic income pilot project, the Hamilton couple cried.

“I just felt like after so long of everything just constantly going wrong and having the worst kind of luck that we finally had something go right,” said Dan Weiss.

He and partner Justine Taylor were “desperate” after both lost “what little work” they had, getting behind on bills and rent and, to top it all off, finding out they were expecting a baby — a little brother for nine-year-old Julia.

The co-founder of one of Ottawa’s leading tech companies is calling on the Ontario government to save the province’s basic income pilot, arguing the plan deserves a chance to show whether it can pull low-income residents out of poverty.

Pythian CEO Paul Vallée, who penned an open letter to Premier Doug Ford and Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod last month expressing his opinion, told OBJ some of the world’s top economists and business leaders support the push for a basic income.

CBC News

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is calling on the federal government to pick up the tab on Ontario's recently cancelled basic income pilot project.

"Strong government leadership is required to address the challenges of our changing economic landscape. That's why I'd like to take this opportunity today to call on the federal government to step in and fund the remainder of the basic income pilot project," said Singh during a speech to the Council of Canadian Innovators in Ottawa Tuesday.

NOW

If ever there was a government policy that’s a no-brainer, it’s the Ontario Basic Income Pilot (OBIP) project. 

So why did Doug Ford break an election promise and kill the program that’s now set to end in March 2019? 

Some 4,000 Ontarians are taking part in the pilot. Laura Cattari, a member of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction, is one of them. 

She says basic income recipients, “Did exactly what they were supposed to do.