Today, January 20th, is recognized annually in the U.S. as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. If still alive, Reverend King, Jr. would have celebrated his 85th birthday five days ago. Yet in so many ways this monumental man remains with us, in words, imagery and most of all, wisdom and inspiration.
Renowned for his leadership on civil rights, Rev. King, Jr. was also an indefatigable champion of social and economic rights. In what today we can call a sharp rebuke to the food bank and similar phenomena of ephemeral poverty relief, Rev. King, Jr. held that “[t]rue compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” In other words, get to the heart of the matter: work upstream more than down, lest beggaring shall persist evermore.
In his seminal book of 1967, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Rev. King, Jr. wrote that he had become “convinced that the simplest solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income.” He noted the major benefits guaranteed (i.e., basic) income would render, the “host of positive psychological changes [that] inevitably will result from widespread economic security.”
Foremost among them: “The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement” (underlining added for emphasis).
This – the value of human dignity – is the core value underlying the growing movement for basic income in Canada. We can and must talk about values of equality, good health, learning, family stability, creativity, entrepreneurship, prosperity, citizenship and more, all of which basic income serves to support. But underlying them is the value of dignity. And in the context of social security this means that no one should have to prostrate themselves to secure a humane floor of decent income upon which they can move forward.
Happily, it appears that basic income has encouraging support among Canadians. A recent national survey for The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, by the Environics Institute for Survey Research in collaboration with Concordia University, found that 46% of Canadians are in favour of a “guaranteed annual income” while 42% are opposed: the remainder could be supportive (“Depends”) or did not have an answer one way or the other (see also this infographic).
Yet in these early months of The BIG Push campaign for basic income security in Canada, we know that this historic national effort is, at heart, a struggle – a social, cultural and political struggle – for the values of Canadians. Indeed, of those 46% reported to support basic income, 19% are “strongly” in favour and 27% “somewhat” so, whereas of the 42% who are opposed, 25% are “strongly” against and another 17% “somewhat” so. This suggests the challenge of winning over to basic income’s support many of the undecided, the indifferent and the skeptical.
In a footnote that appears beneath the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Pierre Elliott Trudeau claimed that “[w]e must now establish the basic principles, the basic values and beliefs which hold us together as Canadians so that beyond our regional loyalties there is a way of life and a system of values which make us proud of the country that has given us such freedom and such immeasurable joy.”
And yet, 32 years following adoption of the Charter – what one Member of Parliament told me last year was the last “big thing” in Canada – we remain a nation in which “the right to life, liberty and security of the person” (per Section 7 of the Charter) is severely compromised by the poverty that plagues an enduring and large swath of the population.
Indeed, as health columnist André Picard has reported in The Globe and Mail, a 7.4 year gap in life expectancy exists between poor and wealthy men in Canada, for women a 4.5 year gap. And that’s the national average: in a place such as Hamilton, a 21-year gap in life expectancy of the rich and poor has been documented.
There are many practical reasons why the time has come for basic income. But at root this is a values-based matter of vital public policy. Something deep inside human beings is giving rise to the call for basic income. And that’s because, as Rev. King, Jr. also said so well:
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.
