By Roderick Benns

Publisher of Leaders and Legacies, a social purpose news site

The mayor of Victoria, Lisa Helps, says basic income policy and robust local economies go hand in hand.

“There is a strong link between having a basic income and creating a strong local economy. There is more money to circulate and it supports the ‘buy local’ movement,” she says.

“So that means it’s good for the people who need more to live on, but also for the goods and services being sold by our business community,” Helps says.

Many Canadian mayors were invited to complete a national survey by Leaders and Legacies, in order to gauge municipal level support for a basic income guarantee policy. Her city – Victoria – represents the sixth provincial or territorial capital leader to support the policy.

By Roderick Benns

The mayor of Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, says basic income policy would bring dignity and equity to Canada’s largest territory.

Mayor Mary Wilman (pictured left) says the multiple challenges of northern living on Baffin Island and in the rest of Nunavut are so great that citizens need basic income policy to lift them out of poverty.

“Due to a lack of roads and access, the only means of getting food here is through an annual shipping route and by air,” says Wilman. “That means we have to pay about three times as much for food as people pay in the south.”

By Roderick Benns

Publisher of Leaders and Legacies, a social purpose news site

Perhaps now, in the middle of a federal election, it would be a good time to stop pretending that we are helpless to eliminate poverty. In a nation as wealthy and as privileged as Canada, poverty is simply a social construction. It is the result of decisions we continue to make (or not make) as a society — and it is costing us dearly. Inequality breeds poorer health outcomes. It drains our economy. It compromises our moral purpose as one of the world’s leading nations.

By Roderick Benns

Publisher of Leaders and Legacies, a social purpose news site

From the time he was a toddler, John Dunn was bounced around 13 times from one Ontario foster home to the next until he turned 18. He was originally taken into care due to complications from his mother’s severe — and often suicidal — bi-polar disorder and alcoholism, and was separated from his three siblings in the process.

There was often abuse, and he knows the experiences left an imprint on the shape of his life.

“I think I began to develop a constant mourning…of friends, family, and pretty well anything I began to become familiar with,” Dunn, now 44, tells Leaders and Legacies.