by Kate McFarland | Dec 20, 2016 | News
Roderick Benns, the author of a new book of interviews on Canadians’ views of basic income, interviewed Chris Ballard, a Liberal Party Member of the Ontario Provincial Parliament. In June 2016, Ballard was appointed as Minister of Housing and Minister Responsible for the Poverty Reduction Strategy, and he will now be overseeing the province’s pilot study of a basic income guarantee.
In the interview, Ballard expresses optimism about the basic income pilot, and speaks about how the changing nature of work creates a need for new social policies. He also discusses federal interest in Ontario’s pilot, mentioning that he will regularly share information with Jean-Yves Duclos, Canada’s Minister of Families, Children and Social Development.
Read More:
Roderick Benns (November 29, 2016) “Ontario Minister hopeful for Basic Income pilot,” Basic Income Canada Network.
Reviewed by Dawn Rozakis
Cover photo: Ontario Waterfront CC BY 2.0 Vlad Podvorny
by Kate McFarland | Nov 27, 2016 | News
Warren (Smokey) Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), has issued a cautionary statement against the province’s interest in pursuing a basic income guarantee.
The OPSEU leader’s statement comes in response to the comprehensive report published by Hugh Segal, the lead adviser to the Ontario government’s impending pilot study of a basic income guarantee, which was published on November 3.
Thomas worries that the adoption of a basic income guarantee, which enjoys much of its support from politicians on the right, would be followed with cuts in essential public services:
“Basic Income has had the support of right-wingers for decades now because of the expectation that it would reduce the government’s role in providing services, and shift that work on to families and communities. Given the direction the current Ontario government is taking on social services, I think Ontarians have every reason to be skeptical.”
“We support the goals of raising incomes for people living in poverty. We support extra counselling. We support reducing the stigma associated with social assistance. But we aren’t convinced Basic Income will do these things. If anything, it may make people a little less poor, for a little while, until public services end up on the chopping block. I’m worried that this Basic Income is just part of the Liberals’ larger plan to further privatize the province.”
Instead of a basic income guarantee, Thomas supports raising the minimum wage, expanding and increasing existing social assistance programs like Ontario Works (OW) and the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), and maintaining funding for public services.
Segal argues in his report that a basic income should be tested as a replacement for OW and ODSP, which place limits on recipients’ earned income and work participation and thus require extensive monitoring of recipients. OW, for example, requires that recipients demonstrate “financial need” and prove that they are making “reasonable efforts” to obtain employment (in the absence of extenuating circumstances). ODSP requires that recipients document proof of a disability. According to Segal, the main purpose of the pilot is to test the effectiveness of an unconditional income guarantee against what he describes as “broad policing, control, and monitoring” inherent in these programs.
If Segal’s recommendations are adopted, Ontario’s pilot will examine–among other impacts–the cost of administering a basic income guarantee in comparison to OW and ODSP, as well as its relative effectiveness in improving health, education, and workforce participation. Segal also urges that the pilot be designed such that no participant would be financially worse off under the basic income guarantee than under these existing programs.
Thomas’s skepticism is not an unusual response from a progressive critic of basic income. In the United States, for example, anti-poverty researcher and advocate Robert Greenstein (President of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) has argued that any politically feasible basic income has a high risk of leaving tens of millions of poor Americans worse off–since, to attract right-wing supporters, the policy would most likely accompany massive cuts in other programs and services (see also Greenstein’s interview in Vox). Earlier in the year, writer and attorney Joel Dodge raised similar concerns about right-wing basic income proposals in an interview with Basic Income News (following up on his article for Quartz on the same topic).
Thomas’s remarks were publicized via a OPSEU press release. The OPSEU represents more than 130,000 employees of the provincial government of Ontario (as reported on its website).
The government of Ontario is currently accepting public feedback on Segal’s report, both online and via in-person meetings, until January 31, 2017.
Reference
“OPSEU sounds note of caution on Basic Income plan” (OPSEU Press Release from November 18, 2016).
Article reviewed by Genevieve Shanahan
Top photo: OPSEU at Toronto Pride Parade, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 David Allan Barker
by Kate McFarland | Nov 4, 2016 | News
The latest step to Ontario’s basic income pilot occurred on Thursday, November 3, 2016, when the Ministry of Community and Social Services released a call for public input on the design and objectives of the study and published a new comprehensive report from Project Adviser Hugh Segal.
In February 2016, the provincial government of Ontario, Canada announced a budgetary commitment to finance a pilot study of a basic income guarantee. In June, the government appointed former senator Hugh Segal — who has been promoting basic income in Canada for more than a decade — as the project’s Special Adviser. (For some of Segal’s past writings on basic income, see here.)
Segal has now released a detailed and comprehensive discussion paper in which he lays out his recommendations for the design and administration of the pilot. The government is soliciting input from the public before it makes its final decision.
This release of this proposal for Ontario’s basic income study closely follows the publication of details about the upcoming pilots in Finland and the Netherlands, as well as the charity GiveDirectly’s study in Kenya.
A Negative Income Tax Model
If the provincial government of Ontario decides to adopt Segal’s newly announced proposal, it will test a basic income guarantee (BIG) — wherein cash payments are disbursed automatically and unconditionally to individuals whose income falls below a certain threshold — as a replacement to its Ontario Works program and Ontario Disability Support Program.
Segal recommends that participants in the pilot be guaranteed a monthly income of at least $1320, or 75 percent of the province’s Low Income Measure, with an additional $500 supplement to those with disabilities.
In Segal’s proposal, the BIG is to be structured as a negative income tax (NIT), in which the amount of the subsidy is tapered off for higher earners, in contrast to a “demogrant” model wherein all participants would receive a fixed monthly payment regardless of other earnings. That is, the government would “top up” the earnings of pilot participants whose incomes fall beneath $1320 (or other level chosen for the basic income guarantee). Those who earn more than $1320 per month would receive smaller benefits or, depending on earnings, none at all.
Eligibility is to extend to all residents of the selected communities between the ages of 18 and 65, regardless of current income. All participants will be guaranteed a minimum income, as per the NIT model summarized above. However, depending on their initial and subsequent earned income, some participants may not receive any payment during the course of the experiment. As Segal’s discussion paper notes, “even though the program is based on a principle of universal access, not all participants will receive symmetric payments or any payment at all.”
Segal offers two reasons for his recommendation that the pilot test a negative income tax rather than a universal demogrant. First, this makes the design unique: no other planned trial of a basic income guarantee will employ the NIT model; thus, outside of Ontario’s pilot, no data on the impact of this specific model will be collected. Second, Segal believes that a demogrant, unlike an NIT, is not realistically affordable in Canada (nor in other developed nations).
Experimental Design
Segal recommends two types of studies:
(1) A randomized control trial, to be conducted in an urban center, in which different treatment groups receive different levels of guaranteed income and/or pay different rates of taxes on additional earned income. Subjects will be randomly sampled from all residents (of at least one year) between the ages of 18 to 65, with participation in the experiment being voluntary. Participants would then be randomly assigned to one of four groups, including a control.
(2) “Saturation sites” in which all members of a community receive the basic income guarantee (and are subject to corresponding changes in the tax schedule). Ideally, according to Segal’s report, “one saturation site would be located in southern Ontario, one in northern Ontario, and one would be chosen and planned in close collaboration with First Nations communities.”
In each case, the study is to last a minimum of three years.
Measured Outcomes
According to the discussion paper, the “core question” that Ontario’s pilot endeavors to answer is, in Segal’s words, “Is there a more humane and efficient way to reduce poverty, a way that better respects the rights of those in poverty to make their own life choices, reduces stigma and growth in bureaucracy, yet produces improved outcomes in terms of work and life prospects?”
In order to answer this question, Segal lays out many variables that he urges researchers to monitor and analyze in the pilot, including the following:
- Administrative costs or savings to the government.
- Health outcomes, as measured by (for example) prescription drug use or number of visits to primary care physicians, emergency departments, and hospitals.
- “Life choices” such as career decisions, education decisions, family decisions, and choices in living arrangements.
- Education outcomes of participants and their children, including completion, attendance, and standardized test scores.
- Work behavior, including employment status, hours worked, number of jobs, and participation in job-search activities. The report mentions participation in the underground economy as another outcome of interest.
- “Food security” status as assessed through the Canadian Community Health Survey and the researchers’ own surveys or interviews.
- Subjects’ “perceptions of their place in society, their capacity to contribute, their social environment’s capacity to protect them” as collected through interviews.
- Interactions between the basic income guarantee and other welfare programs (e.g. the Canada Child Benefit).
- In saturation sites, community-level impacts such as changes in rent and prices of goods and services, crime and incarceration rates, civic participation, and the use of public services.
Thus, the Ontario pilot is likely to examine a much wider and more diverse range of outcomes than the impending basic income pilots in Finland and the Netherlands, which focus more narrowly on assessing the impact of a basic income guarantee on employment.
This difference follows in part from a deliberate decision not merely to reproduce these studies. Segal states Ontario should not duplicate research being conducted elsewhere, for the sake of “maximiz[ing] the diversity of various different data sets generated by such endeavours.”
National Context
Segal recommends that Canada’s federal government “consider partnering with any willing province on any Basic Income pilots now being considered or contemplated.”
As Segal describes in the report (links added), Ontario is not alone in Canada in its interest in pursuing a basic income pilot:
“[T]he federal government introduced an enhanced child benefit in July 2016, with the objective of constructively increasing the income of low and middle-income Canadian families with children. Moreover, the House of Commons Finance Committee recommended in its pre-budget report that the government of Canada move forward with a pilot project on Basic Income.
“In its most recent ministerial mandate letter, the government of Quebec instructed the Minister of Employment and Social Solidarity to modernize income support programs and embrace better ways of reducing poverty, including a Basic Income guarantee. The Quebec Liberal Party Youth Wing, in August 2016, summoned the government to implement a Basic Income guarantee in lieu of the province’s current welfare system. The government of Nova Scotia has initiated a comprehensive social support review looking for better ways to eliminate the welfare wall and to better support the working poor. The mayors of Calgary and Edmonton have welcomed the idea of a Basic Income guarantee and associated pilot projects, as has Alberta’s Minister of Finance. In August 2015, the Government of Saskatchewan Advisory Group on Poverty Reduction also recommended a Basic Income pilot.”
Call for Input
As announced on November 3, 2016, Ontario’s Ministry of Community and Social Services will be conducting consultations to solicit public input on the basic income trial, guided by Segal’s discussion paper. Consultations will run through January 2017.
Those who want to provide input may contribute in one of two ways: attend an in-person meeting (see the schedule here) or share feedback online (until January 31, 2017).
The first stage of the pilot study — selecting the sites, obtaining access to data sources, and selecting and obtaining consent from participants — is slated to commence before the end of March 2017.
More Information
News release from the Ontario government (Ministry of Community and Social Services): “Ontario Seeking Input on Basic Income Pilot”
Discussion paper: “Finding a Better Way: A Basic Income Pilot Project for Ontario” by Hugh Segal.
Thanks to Jenna van Draanen for proofreading a draft of this article.
Cover photo: “Terminally Invisible” CC BY-NC 2.0 Kat Northern Lights Man (taken in Toronto, Ontario).
by Kate McFarland | Oct 5, 2016 | News
The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (at the University of Toronto) is holding a discussion of basic income (guaranteed annual income [1]) on Wednesday, October 12.
Panelists include federal Senator Art Eggleton and scholar Michael Mendelson (Caledon Institute of Social Policy).
Eggleton and Mendelson will discuss the extent to which left-wing and right-wing proponents of “basic income” really do agree on policy –and, in light of this, whether a progressive basic income policy is practically feasible:
While the idea of a ‘Basic Income’ or a ‘Guaranteed Annual Income’ is attractive to many across the political spectrum, this attraction may be due to the idea remaining vague enough to encompass a range of what are actually very different programs.
On the one hand, those on the right see a relatively small unconditional payment to all adults replacing almost all other income security programs and many social services. Libertarian advocates of a Basic Income see it replacing even Medicare for the poor and the young. The right sees the Basic Income or Guaranteed Annual Income as reducing government expenditure or at the worst with the income guarantee low enough so that it is fiscally neutral.
On the other side of the spectrum, the left sees the program as offering an unconditional benefit large enough to lift everyone out of poverty, while leaving social insurance and many other programs, and certainly all social services, intact. In the left’s vision, taxes would rise radically to cover the costs and the beneficial result would be significant income redistribution.
For those looking for progressive change that can meaningfully reduce poverty and inequality, the question is whether there is a practical way to implement a Basic Income or Guaranteed Income, which might not accomplish immediately the full-scale goals of sweeping away all poverty and radically redistributing income, but which would represent significant progress from where we are today. Or, are progressives advocating for a Basic Income or a Guaranteed Annual Income, actually playing into the hands of a right wing agenda?
Senator Eggleton has been an outspoken advocate of the basic income guarantee (BIG) within Canada’s Liberal Party. Last February, he tabled a motion in the Senate calling on the federal government to fund a pilot study of BIG. (For more information, see Eggleton’s HuffPost article “Time for Canada to Test a Basic Income“.)
Michael Mendelson has served as a consultant for Canadian governments and institutions, in addition to publishing numerous articles on social and fiscal policy. Along with Ken Battle, Sherri Torjman and Ernie Lightman, Mendelson wrote “A Basic Income Plan for Canadians with Severe Disabilities” (Nov 2010), a proposal to replace Canada’s welfare programs for persons with disabilities with a guaranteed minimum income.
The event is open to the public, with no registration required.
For more information, see the event page (“Is it Time for Basic Income?“) at the website of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
[1] In the event description, as in much of the Canadian discourse, the terms ‘basic income’ and ‘guaranteed annual income’ are used roughly synonymously to refer to programs that, through the use of direct cash transfers, aim to ensure that no individual’s income falls below a level needed to obtain basic necessities (similar to the use of the term ‘basic income guarantee’ elsewhere).
Reviewed by Ali Özgür Abalı
Photo: Monument to Multiculturalism (a sculpture unveiled by Art Eggleton during his time as mayor of Toronto) CC BY 2.0 Shaun Merritt
by Kate McFarland | Aug 6, 2016 | News
BIEN co-founder Guy Standing will be participating in Social Canada Revisited, a conference on the architecture of Canadian social policy, to be held in Kingston, Ontario from August 22-24.
Standing will speak on a panel on income security, which is scheduled for the afternoon of Tuesday, August 23. He’ll be joined by Miles Corak–an economist at the University of Ottawa who researches child rights, poverty, immigration, social and economic mobility, unemployment, and social policy.
Topics of other panels include equality of opportunity, social inclusion, and public opinion, among others. According to a synopsis of the theme of the conference:
[S]ome Canadians have consistently fallen through the cracks [of Canada’s social policy architecture], most significantly Canada’s indigenous people. And contemporary economic, labour market and social dynamics are posing new challenges. The labour market is increasingly skewed between high and low skilled jobs; income growth is stagnant for many; younger Canadians struggle to secure sustainable career and life paths; many young and old alike worry about retirement income; and new cracks have appeared in Canada’s increasingly diverse social fabric.
Kingston, Ontario has already been considering basic income as a response to such contemporary economy challenges. In December 2015, it became the first municipality in Canada to pass a motion endorsing basic income, calling on the governments of Ontario and Canada “to research, develop, implement and evaluate a Basic Income Guarantee for all citizens” as a means to “reduce income insufficiency, insecurity, and inequality.” Kingston city council sent copies of its successful motion to other municipal governments — some of which, such as Waterloo, have followed Kingston’s lead in endorsing basic income.
One goal of the conference is to “examine persistent and/or new social fault-lines and ask where new approaches and new thinking are needed.” Given Standing’s participation at the conference, and Kingston’s own important position in Ontario’s basic income movement, one can guess that basic income will be among the “new approaches” discussed.
For more information about Social Canada Revisited, including a full schedule of speakers and sessions, see the event’s webpage from the School of Policy Studies at Queen’s University.
Queen’s University photo CC polannahowie
Thanks, as always, to my supporters on Patreon!
