Giant banner in
Geneva Switzerland
by campaigners
for a universal basic
income, May 14,
2016. Photo by
Fabrice Coffrini/
AFP; posted on
cyprusnews.eu.
With the two largest Canadian provinces vowing
to take a hard look at some form of basic income
program and the federal minister for Families saying
the idea merits debate, Canada has been making
headlines alongside Switzerland, Finland, the Netherlands
and Kenya as a possible pioneer in the realworld
exploration of guaranteed income.
There’s little chance Canada will be first to the
plate, however. Very little is known about Ontario’s
plans beyond a short paragraph in the Liberal government
budget speech promising to announce a
pilot project this fall. And although the Québec minister
responsible for developing his own province’s
plans has literally written the book on the subject
— François Blais’s 2002 Ending Poverty: A Basic
Income for All Canadians — Blais has also made it
clear that he favours a go-slow, étapiste approach
that could take as much as 20 to 25 years to achieve
a full BI program.
While media attention in the global North has
focused on the (recently defeated) Swiss referendum,
some of the most interesting BI projects and
plans are in the global South, from Brazil to South
Africa. And not all are government initiatives. The
GiveDirectly.org charity is planning on distributing a
BI to 6,000 Kenyan villagers over 10 years in a historic
program expected to cost $30 million. (They
estimate the same project in the global North would
cost $1 billion.) By targeting a population that
already has an extremely low income, GiveDirectly
can affordably conduct what will likely be the world’s
first true study of a long-term, universal guaranteed
income program that provides for a basic standard of
living, including the potential for investments, such
as livestock, that can further increase recipients’
incomes.
Back at home, Ontario Finance Minister Charles
Sousa announced the province’s vague intentions in
his February budget speech. “The pilot project will
test a growing view at home and abroad that a basic
income could build on the success of minimum wage
policies and increases in child benefits by providing
more consistent and predictable support in the context
of today’s dynamic labour market. The pilot
would also test whether a basic income would provide
a more efficient way of delivering income support,
strengthen the attachment to the labour force,
and achieve savings in other areas, such as health
care and housing supports. The government will
work with communities, researchers and other stakeholders
in 2016 to determine how best to design and
implement a Basic Income pilot.”
Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne told CBC Radio
in March that the proposal arose out of “a real concern
around the way social assistance works in
Ontario. What we want people to do is build up
capacity in their lives so they can be successful.”
Wynne said just coming up with the plan will take a
year, however, with a program budget only in 2017.
The pilot project is expected to target a specific
community or communities rather than across the
province as a whole.
Mixed messages in Québec
Québec, on the other hand, could be looking at a
gradual implementation of a universal but watereddown
BI program, if Blais’s book and recent statements
to media are any indication. The former dean
of Université Laval’s Social Science faculty, Blais’s
slim 101-page treatise is a mostly dry examination of
the case for instituting a basic income. Although he
expresses strong support for BI, the political scientist
wrote that “the main challenge is substituting it
as gently as possible” for the current mishmash of
direct and indirect government support programs
and tax credits.
Blais the politician, however, has been part of a
government hell-bent on implementing a policy of
austerity despite evidence from around the globe
that such polices have actually harmed the neoliberal
economies where they have been implemented.
And as minister for Employment and Social Solidarity,
he has been advocating a form of conditionality
that Blais the academic condemned. (The Québec
government has introduced legislation aimed at
forcing young, first-time welfare recipients to enrol
in training programs or face cuts of up to half of their
monthly allocation — the type of situation Blais
described 15 years earlier something that “will only
result in further poverty and exclusion.”)
Blais has acknowledged that BI would be a hard
sell. In his book he advocates a level of aid that is
“as high as possible,” but mitigates that with concern
that a transition that moves too fast or too far
may frighten off public support. In recent interviews,
he suggested that initial reforms should be revenue
neutral, a far cry from the way he described BI a few
months earlier as “the most radical idea of the last
50 years.”
As an academic, Blais was adamant that any program
be universal, individualized and unconditional
— with cheques going to each citizen, rich and poor
alike — in order to simplify administration, increase
transparency, and eliminate any means-testing associated
with receiving government support. “Selective
programs are generally stigmatizing and humiliating
for the people that are eligible,” he wrote. “They are
forced into the situation of petitioners who must
show proof of their poverty and put up with constant
investigations into their personal life.”
But as Stéphan Corriveau, director-general of a
Québec federation of non-profit housing groups, told
The Globe and Mail in February, a flawed BI model
would hurt rather than help the poor. “The devil’s in
the details. A guaranteed national income is both a
very promising and threatening (possibility). It could
be threatening because some of the proposals that
are on the table are actually going to diminish the
income of the lower-income part of the population
and are being used as a way of dismantling the
social security net.”
Ottawa “welcomes debate”
In Ottawa, the current Minister of Families, Children
and Social Development is Blais’ friend and former
Université Laval colleague, economist Jean-Yves
Duclos. Duclos has also studied and written extensively
about income equity issues, including a paper
with Blais. In a research paper he co-wrote in 2013,
however, Duclos concluded that wage subsidies
would be a more effective way to help pull the unemployed
out of poverty than an unconditional income
transfer, which his models suggested might actually
increase poverty. Interviewed by The Globe and Mail
after his appointment to the Justin Trudeau cabinet,
Duclos said that while BI wasn’t a government priority,
he welcomed the debate. “There are many different
types of guaranteed minimum income. There are
many different versions. I’m personally pleased that
people are interested in the idea.”
The Liberal Party itself has not endorsed a specific
BI program, but a resolution adopted by party
delegates in May calls on Liberal officials, “in consultation
with the provinces, (to) develop a poverty
reduction strategy aimed at providing a minimum
guaranteed income.”
This article appeared in the Summer 2016 issue of Canadian Dimension (Basic Income).
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