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.

Evidence Network

We, collectively, represent the principal investigators, research teams and stakeholder groups behind several distinct basic income experiments underway in Finland, Scotland, the Netherlands, the USA, Spain, Kenya and India. We profoundly regret that you chose to cancel the Ontario Basic Income Guarantee Experiment prematurely.

Each of our experimental designs is somewhat different, reflecting our own political and social context. Together these experiments have the potential to produce data upon which evidence-informed social policy might be based. Ontario represented a key piece of the analysis, and has been watched closely by policymakers and researchers around the globe.

Huffington Post

Kate* escaped her husband's physical blows the day he finally left, but his financial manipulation was just beginning.

Days after they separated, he left his job and went on disability, cutting her income through child and spousal support in half. He's defied a court order to pay their mortgage, leaving her to make payments on the house alone while she pours even more money into the legal dispute. Even though she and their children are covered by his insurance, he's refused to send her the reimbursements after she pays for glasses, dental work or medication.

Kate is trained as a registered nurse. She would like to work, but one of her children is seriously ill, requiring daily care at home and regular trips out of town for treatment. When she was married, Kate said she tried to take multiple jobs but her husband wouldn't allow it. She was "100 per cent" dependent on him financially.

The Conversation

The cancellation of Ontario’s basic income project not only violates our obligation as a society to ensure economic security for all. It also breaches the ethical obligations we have to those participating in research, and underscores the need for a multi-faceted research methodology in designing better income security programs.

The new Conservative government in Ontario led by Doug Ford has cancelled the Ontario Basic Income Pilot – an initiative of the former Liberal government of Kathleen Wynne.

The pilot promised a comparison of those receiving a monthly basic income in test sites in three areas of Ontario with those who did not. The research was aimed at ascertaining “whether a basic income helps people living on low incomes better meet their basic needs and improve their education, housing, employment and health.”

CBC News

Hamilton City Council has voted in favour of officially denouncing the provincial government's decision to cancel Ontario's basic income pilot project.

The vote was unanimous, despite concerns from one councillor that the move could harm the city's "somewhat tenuous relationship" with the new Ford government.

Ward 12 Councillor Lloyd Ferguson said what worries him is that council's move "won't change the province's mind."

"It's politically right, but is it right for our relationship with the province?" he asked, adding that criticizing a decision the government made over something that's clearly their jurisdiction could "annoy them."

​But Ward 4 Councillor, Sam Merulla, who brought the motion, said the denunciation isn't about bothering the government, it's about sending a signal that Hamilton won't condone any attacks on the city's most vulnerable.

CBC News

One by one, participants in the province's basic income pilot project came to the microphone at Hamilton City Hall Wednesday to mourn the dignity they felt was robbed from them after the program was unceremoniously scrapped.

Some spoke about how their mental health had vastly improved while the program was running. Others talked about how it helped them focus on work, and growing a small business. Still others celebrated the small victories of being able to buy fresh food, or just see a movie.

For Michael Hampson, the program afforded him something as simple as being able to buy new clothes.

The Province

In a move likely designed to rattle a few cages this summer, the provincial government’s decision to chop the basic income pilot project came across as a cold reversal of a campaign promise that said the opposite.

The basic income guarantee has been around as a concept for decades, but after years of research and a growing civil society movement, it became reality in Ontario in the form of test projects in three regions in the province.

The basic income guarantee is anything but simple, but as issues like unemployment and poverty, mental illness and disabilities have grown more pronounced in recent years, the concept of creating an income floor to help those families overcome problems governments or corporations seemed unable to solve grew in support.