Basic Income Fosters Healthy Communities

[Music]

harvest is the largest food bank in the

province of manitoba a couple of years

ago i was having lunch with a group of

women who were volunteers and also

clients of the food bank

one woman began to tell a story and the

story got longer and more complicated in

the telling and finally she stopped

herself and laughed and blamed her

confusion on a change in her medication

what happened next shouldn’t have

surprised me but it did

people began comparing their experiences

with pharmaceuticals some were reaching

into knapsacks and bags and pulling out

pill bottles to compare

and i looked around and i soon realized

that i was the only person at that table

without a prescription for an

antidepressant

that shouldn’t have surprised me because

we medicate poverty

we medicate the anger

and despair

of parents who can’t feed their kids

without recourse to a food bank

and we can do better

basic income is a guarantee that

everybody will have the resources they

need to lead a modest but dignified life

it doesn’t replace necessary social

services like additional supports for

people with disabilities or health care

but it does ensure that everybody has

enough cash to put food on the table a

roof over their heads and clothes on

their back

now you might be asking yourself why we

need a new program like basic income

after all every province in canada has a

program in place that’s designed

specifically to ensure that people with

no other source of income have enough

money to meet their basic needs

depending on where you live it might be

called welfare or social assistance or

income assistance why isn’t that good

enough

if you’ve never applied to such a

program you may imagine that application

is a straightforward

process in fact every one of these

programs is a complex collection of

different benefits and allowances that

makes it very difficult to determine how

much you’re entitled to receive

these programs can also be something of

a trap

in many provinces

extended health care things like dental

care and pharmacare are tied to the

receipt of

income assistance

if you have children or if you have a

disability

it can be a very risky proposition to

accept a job fraternity that comes along

if it means that you have to give up

access to these other programs

these are also programs of last resort

what that means in practice is that if

for example your own child support

you’ll be required to pursue that

through the courts whether you want any

contact with a former partner or not

if you receive a gift from a family

member even something as small as a gift

of groceries or a few dollars to help

with the rent your benefit will be cut

on a dollar for dollar basis

if you’ve worked in the past and you

expect one day to get a pension from the

canada pension plan you’ll be required

to apply for that pension at age 60

even though the financial penalty of

applying at age 60 is such that it

virtually guarantees that you’ll be

living in poverty for the rest of your

life

if after all of that

you qualify for support under these

provincial programs

you’ll receive a benefit that’s well

below the poverty line anywhere in the

country

the greatest limitation of these

programs though is that none of them are

intended to be stand-alone programs

they’re part of a vast web of different

programs and policies put in place by

different levels of government

every one of them intending to send cash

to families with low

incomes some of them are offered by the

federal government by the provincial

government by municipalities all have

different application processes

eligibility requirements and regulations

we force people at the very worst times

in their lives to navigate a complex

bureaucracy in order to access the

benefits they need to live

we can do better

the labor markets changed dramatically

over the past two decades young people

entering the workforce today have very

different opportunities than their

parents and their grandparents had

even before the pandemic 30 of working

canadians were in precarious jobs that

is jobs with low pay volatile earnings

and no security

and yet all of the programs we put in

place to assist low-wage workers are

based on the kinds of jobs that used to

exist

if you lose a precarious job and apply

for employment insurance you’ll very

often find you haven’t worked enough

hours to qualify

or if you do qualify you’ll receive a

benefit that’s too low to meet your

basic needs

we can do better

a basic income can fill the gaps between

temporary programs it can act as a

supplement to low wages

it can it can do what employment

insurance can’t do basic income supports

healthy families and healthy communities

the pandemic showed us how quickly an

infectious disease can move through a

neighborhood that’s characterized by

overcrowded housing and too many workers

in front-line low-wage jobs

the mental health effects of living with

poverty in a high-income country like

canada are fairly obvious

but

our health is determined in so many ways

by the circumstances within which we

live

my first serious introduction to basic

income happened when i was working at

the health sciences center in winnipeg

this is an inner city teaching hospital

and it doesn’t take very long in that

kind of a setting to recognize that

we’re using our emergency departments

our operating theaters and our clinics

to treat the consequences of poverty

i went in search of data associated with

an old experiment that i knew took place

in manitoba in the mid 1970s called

mincom

i wondered whether people who received a

basic income were healthier than their

counterparts who didn’t

for a period of three years a group of

families in manitoba received a basic

income

and the data showed

that people who received a basic income

were eight and a half percent less

likely to be hospitalized than similar

people with similar incomes living in

similar kinds of families and

communities who did not receive a basic

income

eight and a half percent

our health care system isn’t the only

social program we have that deals with

the consequences of poverty

eighty percent of women who are

incarcerated are imprisoned for poverty

related crimes

eighty percent

how different would this world be if we

spent a little bit of money on

prevention rather than waiting for

crises to occur and using social

programs to deal with the consequences

of those crises

some people worried about the unintended

consequences

of a basic income after all why would

anybody work if they can receive money

for nothing

from a basic income

we have experimental evidence from all

over the world that suggests that basic

income doesn’t discourage work during

the income project

most people who were working when the

project was introduced continued to work

after basic income was put in place it

made no difference to their work effort

two groups of people did wear class the

first were new mothers

new mothers in the mid 70s could

anticipate a maternity leave of four

weeks when they gave birth and many new

mothers decided to use some of them

income stipend in order to buy

themselves longer parental leaves

we’ve subsequently learned that babies

benefit families benefit mother’s

benefit all of society benefits when

parents spend longer with newborn

infants

the other group of people who work less

are precisely the people that everybody

worries about young single men

young single men cut their work hours

really dramatically

so i went in search of some of those

young single men a few years ago men

like eric whose widowed mother received

income support while he was in high

school

and eric told me that boys from families

like his were under a fair amount of

family pressure to become

self-supporting as soon as they could

the norm was that they would turn 16

they’d leave high school they get a job

sometimes a seasonal job in agriculture

or a job in manufacturing

and the limited family money could go to

support younger brothers and sisters

when men come came along some of the

parents including eric’s mother

encouraged their sons to stay in school

just a little bit longer

and so eric became part of a lucky

cohort of boys who finished high school

who who otherwise wouldn’t have in many

cases they were the first in their

families to have finished high school

eric is now a college professor

the opportunities available to somebody

who might have finished high school

by giving up a few hours working in the

mid-1970s

are dramatic

but given all of this

the um

the question that sits in everybody’s

mind is can we afford it basic income

sounds like a wonderful policy but is

this something our country can afford

when we have so many other demands on

taxpayer dollars

that was precisely the question that was

put to the parliamentary budget office

how much would it cost to offer a basic

income to all canadians who needed it

economists at the parliamentary budget

office crunched the numbers and they

came up with a an eye-watering 85

billion dollars a year it might cost 85

billion dollars a year to offer basic

income but they said

but

we’re already spending 85 billion

dollars a year and more on all these

other programs that are designed to

transfer cash to people with low incomes

provincial income assistance

welfare um provincial social assistance

refundable and non-refundable tax

credits deductions a whole range of

programs that are put in place precisely

to do that

what they said would happen if we took

the money we’re already spending and

spent it smarter

we could cut poverty by 49

now think about that for a minute

we could cut the poverty rate in half

with no increases in taxes no new taxes

no cuts to important social programs

like supports for people with

disabilities

all of these programs stay in place

and poverty falls by half

it’s time for a basic income

we can afford it our friends our

families our neighbors deserve it

and a healthy society demands it

thank you very much

[Music]

you