Moved second reading of Bill S-206, An Act to develop a national framework for a guaranteed livable basic income.

She said: Honourable senators, the latest research reveals that Canada spends upward of $92 billion per year paying for measures that keep people stuck in poverty instead of investing in approaches that would allow them to rebound. Canada spends billions policing access and monitoring recipients of social assistance schemes that provide too little. We spend billions on emergency health treatment for people who lack housing, health care and food security; the resources to treat preventable conditions; and on jail cells filled with those who are poor, homeless and dealing with mental health and addictions issues. We lose billions in undeveloped economic capacity and on tax revenue from those we have ignored instead of including and empowering.

It is difficult to fathom the full human, social and financial implications of poverty. Poverty is inextricably interconnected with and diminishes every aspect of Canada’s economy. The impacts on society, health and humanity are massive. Too many existing financial services and systems are experienced as uncertain, unreliable, exhausting and demoralizing, reinforcing harmful and discriminatory stereotypes that wrongfully label as less capable and less trustworthy the people whom Canada chooses to abandon to poverty, homelessness and related crises.

Speaking today on the traditional, unceded, unsurrendered and unreturned territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg, I acknowledge that those whom our governments choose to abandon are disproportionately women, Indigenous, Black peoples and others who are racialized as well as persons with disabilities.

This chamber has long known that Canada can and must do better. For more than 50 years, across group and party lines, senators have advanced the idea of cash transfers sufficient to live on and available to anyone living in poverty. Cash transfers were seen as a smart, meaningful and cost-effective way to spend less on poverty and invest more in people in ways that benefit all of us.

In the 1971 report of the Special Senate Committee on Poverty, Senator Croll and his colleagues pressed for immediate action on a form of basic income because they “. . . felt the poor could not be asked to wait years for the help they so urgently need.”

That was more than half a century ago. Since then, children in poverty have grown into adults and now seniors living in poverty. How much longer are we prepared to ask Canadians to wait for food, shelter and treatment? How many more nights, weeks, months, years and generations? How many more lives will be sacrificed?

Guaranteed livable basic income is not a new idea. As I reintroduce Bill S-206, a proposal for a national framework for implementing guaranteed livable income, I want to explore some of the reasons why Canadians of today support this bill. I also want to delineate what we mean by guaranteed livable basic income, debunk some persistent myths and misconceptions and discuss why now — as we face growing threats to Canada’s economy and sovereignty from our neighbour to the south — is the right time to move forward with a guaranteed livable basic income.

I want to acknowledge, first, however, Canadians’ collective work on this issue and our collective work in this chamber. I thank so many of you who similarly advocate the implementation of a basic income. We especially appreciate members of the Finance Committee for their study of the former incarnation of this legislation, Bill S-233. I recognize the vital incremental steps made at the federal level, driven by tireless advocacy from community groups, since this bill was last introduced.

In particular, in response to a provincial Progressive Conservative government proposal to launch a guaranteed livable basic income, the federal government has initiated a working group on this topic with the P.E.I. government. First Nations leaders on the Island, including Chief Darlene Bernard, Chief of Lennox Island First Nation and Co-chair of the Epekwitk Assembly of Councils, have demonstrated incredible leadership on this issue. I want to acknowledge as well the work of past and present P.E.I. Senate colleagues across groups.

At a national level, alongside existing forms of basic income for families with children and older Canadians, the government has introduced the Canada Disability Benefit, though much work remains to ensure this program meets its promises and evolves beyond its current limited form.

Colleagues, many of us are seeing in our home communities the local and grassroots efforts driving support for guaranteed livable basic income. Many of us come from one of the multitude of municipalities across Canada that have passed resolutions in support of basic income. Ottawa is one of the most recent to join the call.

Community and civil society advocates of guaranteed livable basic income range from local health units and health associations to the Canadian Public Health Association; from local unions to the Public Service Alliance of Canada; from local women’s shelters to Women’s Shelters Canada, the Women’s Legal Education & Action Fund, the National Association of Women and the Law; from local food banks to the national “Put Food Banks Out of Business” campaign and the Dieticians of Canada; from local churches to the Anglican Church of Canada, the United Church of Canada, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and the late Pope.

This chamber benefited from the leadership of Senator Croll in the 1970s and the Conservative-Liberal dynamic duo of Senators Segal and Eggleton in the 2000s and 2010s. Decades apart, their work resulted in two outstanding, in-depth Senate studies of poverty, each with guaranteed livable basic income as its central recommendation. In 2020, the National Finance Committee chaired by Conservative Senator Mockler, a formidable advocate for those in poverty, added to this history a recommendation for priority government consideration of guaranteed livable basic income. That same year, 50 senators — the majority of the chamber at that time — signed their names to a letter to the Prime Minister with a similar proposal.

Guaranteed livable basic income is a natural fit for this chamber, an intersection of our duties to represent marginalized or so-called minority groups and to take a long-term perspective on Canada’s best interests and the well-being of all Canadians. Today, with 1 in 4 Canadians unable to afford essentials, with 85% of Canadians living paycheque to paycheque and knowing the toll that this precariousness takes on Canadian communities and economies, I urge us, honourable colleagues, to ensure this chamber plays its part yet again. We can do so by returning this bill to committee as soon as possible.

In speaking with colleagues in this chamber and Canadians throughout the country, I am struck by the diverse yet interconnected reasons why people are interested in the potential of a guaranteed livable basic income. Most relate to the countless benefits that flow from redressing poverty and economic instability. I have heard from artists and entrepreneurs that a guaranteed livable basic income could give people space to innovate, allowing them to take creative risks without losing everything. For farmers and fishers, it could be a means of rebounding instead of losing one’s livelihood between and after difficult seasons. For health care experts, it could mean reducing hospitalizations and, in particular, mental health crises. For environmentalists, guaranteed livable basic income could help people survive extreme weather and empower them to care for our planet. For national security experts, it could help counter the deprivation and division that can lead to radicalization. For Black and Indigenous communities, guaranteed livable basic income could be a step toward redressing long-standing historic and ongoing economic inequities. For women in abusive relationships, either in their own homes or on the streets, it could provide the means to safety.

My own first steps toward my belief in the need for guaranteed livable basic income are inseparable from the decades I’ve spent working and walking with so many people — especially Indigenous women — ensnared in poverty and in the criminal legal system, child and social welfare system, as well as the mental health systems.

Today, social assistance programs across Canada are so inadequate and restrictive that it is virtually impossible for those most in need to access safe housing, food, medicine and other essentials. Paradoxically, social assistance programs impede rather than help people to extricate themselves from poverty. They push people into deep and often intergenerational poverty. Restrictions on recipients’ ability to work — even volunteer — combined with limited funding for dental and pharmaceutical services, as well as limited access to subsidized housing and child care, keep people reliant by penalizing efforts to get ahead. It is little wonder that desperate efforts to survive such conditions too often result in people being penalized, even criminalized.

Poverty likewise increases the risks of victimization. People who are poor and otherwise marginalized are too often forced onto the streets, forced to leave mental health issues untreated or forced to stay in abusive relationships or other dire situations. For two in five women in Canada, leaving an abusive partner would mean becoming homeless. By staying in situations of abuse, women are at greater risk not only of further victimization but also of criminalization, especially if they respond with force to defend themselves or their children. Of the women in federal prisons, 9 out of 10 have histories of physical or sexual abuse, nearly always in a context where they lacked the financial resources to escape and had no safe place to go.

As Dr. Evelyn Forget reminds us, “Eighty percent of the women who are in prison are there for poverty-related crimes. . . .” Indigenous women represent half of the women in federal prisons and remain Canada’s fastest growing prison population. Confronted with these realities, we cannot ignore the backdrop of poverty, inequality and violence against women, systemic violence and colonial violence.

Imagine a teenage girl running away to escape sexually abusive family members but having nowhere to go — no friends or family nearby to turn to, no money, no transport and perhaps not even any knowledge of the far-too-limited supports or social programs available. Where would you go? What would you do?

This teenage girl took shelter in a school. She was charged with breaking and entering and received a prison sentence. In jail, she fought back when staff strip-searched her. Staff responded with the harsh, punitive, inhumane and cruel conditions of longer and longer isolation. The resulting irreparable physical, psychological and neurological harms were predictable. All of this was preventable.

Colleagues, we know what comes next in this story. You heard it in our debates on another piece of legislation before this chamber yesterday: Tona’s law. This was part of Tona’s horrific journey. It took three decades of relentless advocacy by Tona and her supporters to undo this — three decades before she was free from the prison system and the mental health system. Terminally ill and now in palliative care, Tona’s health will never recover from what she experienced. The injustices she has lived remain, continuing to damage the lives of countless others.

I have worked and walked with Tona and so many others trying to find pathways to the supports and connections that they need to integrate and contribute within their communities. I have watched Canada instead waste hundreds of thousands of dollars per person per year on cages, cells and isolation that make none of us safer.

With our neighbours to the south pointing to fentanyl as a pretext for imposing punishing tariffs on Canada and with fear-mongering folk proposing mandatory life sentences as a solution to health and homelessness crises, including the fentanyl crisis, it bears repeating that so-called tough-on-crime and war-on-drugs agendas are always toughest on those who are most vulnerable. Not to mention that these agendas would gobble up tens of billions of tax dollars that could be far better invested for the benefit of all of us.

As the Parliamentary Budget Officer has calculated, existing tough-on-crime approaches cost Canadians billions of tax dollars, and Canada has nothing to show for these massive expenditures except jails filled not with those who cause the most harm or who have profited most from drugs or organized crime. Our jails are filled with those who are easiest to scoop up and criminalize because they are poor, racialized or homeless and, therefore, more visible. Those with addictions and mental health issues who are struggling on the streets and under the public gaze are the most likely to be arrested and jailed.

A national framework for a guaranteed livable basic income could work to address the root causes of criminalization while also making economic sense. When it comes to preventing crime and improving public safety, simplistic ideas dressed up as solutions just don’t work, and they won’t work. Instead of squandering money, we need our government to make smart investments in Canadians. We need to invest in communities to ensure that all of us can thrive and no one is left to make desperate and unthinkable choices.

I came to this place — with its long history of leadership on guaranteed livable basic income — to work on access to adequate housing and social, health and economic supports that would help not only redress but actually prevent the travesties and injustices I have witnessed in communities of the dispossessed, especially those failed by current social, economic and health systems and consequently entrapped in the criminal legal system.

Guaranteed livable basic income prevents crime. During a basic income pilot in Dauphin, Manitoba, in the 1970s, crime rates decreased by 17.5% compared to similar towns without the basic income. Per 100,000 people, that amounts to 350 violent crimes — and 1,400 total crimes — prevented. Researchers explained that violent crimes in particular decreased due to reduced financial stress overall and the financial empowerment of women in particular, which decreased the chances of inter-partner assault. Research also suggests that transitional aid programs for people previously incarcerated reduce crimes and include cost benefits. Particularly relevant to the fentanyl crisis, research in Vancouver has also demonstrated that when people who are homeless — including those with substance use and mental health issues — receive cash transfers, they are able to find and keep stable housing, and they also end up spending less on drugs and alcohol.

Guaranteed livable basic income can also support victims and survivors. The Canadian Center for Women’s Empowerment reports that 95% of people with abusive partners have experienced economic abuse and financial control. Abusers frequently took out debts in their partner’s name to harm their credit scores and restrict their ability to leave relationships.

Testifying at the National Finance Committee on the predecessor to this legislation, the Federal Ombudsperson for Victims of Crime emphasized:

The victims and survivors of crime in Canada report from 2009 showed that survivors were absorbing $10 billion in costs. There has been significant inflation since then. Those are things that pull people out of the labour market and out of areas where they can contribute more fully. There’s a whole science of crime prevention that would align well with the principles of guaranteed livable income . . . .

Research suggests the greatest barrier to ending intimate partner violence is a failure to reduce poverty and economic insecurity. Carefully designed cash transfers, including basic incomes, have decreased physical and emotional intimate partner violence, provided financial resources to escape violence, reduced sexual exploitation, increased autonomy in sexual decision making and increased feelings of empowerment and networks of support.

Based on abundant evidence and the lived experiences of victims and survivors, the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls spotlighted the need for a national guaranteed livable basic income in its Calls for Justice 4.5 and 16.20 as a crucial means of supporting Indigenous women and girls, unravelling economic colonialism and preventing future harm.

Most people who have been victimized want to know that what happened to them will not happen again — to them or to anyone else. In this respect, current criminal law responses are woefully inadequate. Guaranteed livable basic income could be one step toward Canada fulfilling this promise to victims and survivors.

Guaranteed livable basic income has a lot to offer Canada. You may be wondering, though, if there is a catch.

The short answer is no. For a fraction of what Canadians currently spend to keep people in poverty, we could have a system that gives millions of people pathways out of poverty and empowers them with choices, opportunities and hope.

Bill S-206 would require the federal government to work to develop a framework for implementing guaranteed livable basic income, creating a mandate and home within the federal government for collaborative work and decision making across levels of government on how a Canadian guaranteed livable basic income could be developed and delivered.

This collaborative process emphasizes respect for the jurisdiction and decision making of governments, First Nations, Inuit, Métis, federal, provincial, territorial and municipal. It also recognizes that governments on the front lines of the housing and homelessness crises, responding to constituents who can’t afford food or dealing with the impact of poverty on the health care system are often those interested in exploring guaranteed livable basic income but which require federal support to implement it.

This legislation does not prescribe a particular design or model. This would be for governments, as well as experts and communities, to determine. This approach reflects how crucial it is to get design questions right. The bill does, however, establish a few essential parameters to guide development, informed by decades of research expertise, evidence and lived experience.

First, guaranteed livable basic income must be universally accessible to people in need. Everyone whose income is below a certain threshold should be able to access these cash transfers. As a person’s income from other sources increases — for example, through a new job — the amount of guaranteed livable basic income received would gradually decrease. A national program must be carefully designed to ensure that, unlike too many existing provincial and territorial social assistance programs, people are never discouraged from work and never have their health benefits cut because of paid work.

Unlike what is typically called “universal basic income,” in order to ensure the program has the greatest impact and is as cost-effective as possible, people who are well off and do not need assistance would not receive a cash transfer. The program is universal only with respect to those who need it.

Second, the income must be livable. It must provide an amount sufficient to afford essentials and permit people to rebound out of poverty wherever they live, including in remote communities, on reserve and in the North.

Current social assistance schemes do not provide enough to live on. Indeed, 98% of people receiving social assistance are unable to escape poverty and 71% are in deep poverty. This minimum subsistence means that people are trapped at the margins, making impossible and unacceptable choices — between food, medicine and shelter, for example. They live on the brink of urgent need and crisis.

The National Advisory Council on Poverty links this inadequate response to poverty to the pernicious opinion that people in need are trying to abuse the system by accessing benefits. Through consultations, they heard that:

. . . programs design their eligibility criteria with a focus on keeping out the “cheaters.” . . . There is a perception that resources are carefully rationed and scrutinized to ensure that each qualifying recipient has “just enough” to survive.

As summarized by one participant in the consultations, “You’re just trying to put food on the table and you’re seen by others as cheating. It’s soul destroying.”

Research on the psychology of poverty, including that of Dr. Jiaying Zhao at the University of British Columbia, demonstrates the exhausting toll of making decisions under the constraint of inadequate resources. At every moment of the day, people in poverty are required to jump through extra cognitive hoops, trying to trade off, optimize and make ends meet. This moment-to-moment cognitive burden means they are less able to focus on long-term financial planning.

Dr. Zhao’s research demonstrates that providing people in poverty with financial training or coaching has no effect on their ability to save or spend money effectively. All the budgeting information in the world is of little use to someone who has no money. What helped was a cash transfer sufficient to get people out of survival mode.

A guaranteed livable basic income must be sufficient to break the cycle of having to put all one’s energy and resources into day-to-day survival — finding food, shelter and a place to warm up — so that people can plan and hope for the future.

A third and related requirement under Bill S-206 is that guaranteed livable basic income must be unconditional. Unlike current social assistance programs, people would not have to meet requirements that are too often unrealistic and ill-adapted to the realities of those living in poverty, that open every aspect of their lives to scrutiny and that place them at constant risk of losing what little benefits they are provided. These policies are dehumanizing. They are also financially costly. Testing people’s eligibility and policing their behaviour takes mountains of administrative resources and results in worse, not better, outcomes.

In one example provided by Dr. Evelyn Forget, a single mother of two on social assistance had a plan to improve her employment prospects and lift herself out of poverty by taking job training. Because she was on social assistance, she was expected to instead keep working or searching for low-paying jobs and required permission from a caseworker before she could attend training. The caseworker did not see the benefits of the woman’s plan and denied it.

For this woman, the Manitoba basic income pilot was a crucial turning point. Enrolled in the program and no longer subjected to the scrutiny of a caseworker, the woman enrolled in training, opening the door for increased earnings. She was proud to be able to model independence for her two daughters.

Guaranteed livable basic income would ensure people are empowered to make the choices they need to in order to rebound out of poverty and thrive.

Fourth and finally, Bill S-206 reinforces that guaranteed livable basic income must be one strand in a strong social safety net. While some less generous forms of income support like provincial and territorial social assistance might no longer be needed, guaranteed livable basic income would not necessarily replace programs and supports linked to specific needs — for example, for Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities or those retiring or losing jobs. The program must not and would not leave people with low incomes worse off.

Nor would it replace or remove the need for vital housing, social, health, education, labour and other programs and protections. Rather, it would ensure that access to these measures and decision making about how best to care for oneself and one’s family and community are not undermined by lack of resources.

We’ve spoken about what guaranteed livable basic income is. I also want to address what it isn’t — in particular, three persistent and pernicious myths and misconceptions.

First, guaranteed livable basic income is not untested. As we heard resoundingly at committee, there is ample data and evidence to demonstrate how a guaranteed livable basic income might be designed and what it can be expected to achieve in Canada.

Canada has a form of basic income for children, the Canada Child Benefit, and for older people, the Guaranteed Income Supplement. The Canada Disability Benefit was intended to provide similar support for those with disabilities.

Manitoba and Ontario have experience with temporary basic income pilots. The Cree Nation and the Quebec Government co‑administer a permanent form of basic income, the Economic Security Program for Cree Hunters. Provincially, Quebec offers a form of basic income for those with long-term disabilities. Newfoundland and Labrador has forms of basic income for children leaving care of the state and people with disabilities and nearing retirement age. A cash transfer program for homeless people is ongoing in British Columbia. P.E.I. is pursuing its proposal for a federally supported, province-wide guaranteed livable basic income demonstration project through participation in a federal-provincial working group. Most recently, New Brunswick committed to exploring basic income for persons with disabilities.

In addition to these made-in-Canada examples, Canada can also look to the experiences of other countries. To provide just a few examples, Scotland continues to study guaranteed livable basic income with a goal of working toward implementation. Finland had a recent, well-known pilot. A small-scale pilot is in progress in England, while Wales has implemented basic income for “care leavers,” children transitioning out of state-run child welfare systems. In Germany, a recent pilot focused specifically on single adults under 40 with low incomes.

The evidence emerging from each of these programs should give us confidence that guaranteed livable basic income is not only achievable but, unlike too many existing programs and services, it is effective.

A second myth has to do with cost. Can we afford a national guaranteed livable basic income? The answer we heard at the National Finance Committee, as emphasized by recent research by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, is yes.

While Bill S-206 does not propose a specific model of guaranteed livable income that can be costed, all available evidence indicates that any cost would be relatively minor. The PBO concluded, for example, that guaranteed livable basic income could be implemented at a relatively low net cost of $3.6 billion annually.

This amount is a small price to pay given that Canada currently expends more than $80 billion per year on poverty. Dr. Jiaying Zhao’s research suggests the figure is more like $92 billion. We spend that now on approaches, as discussed earlier, that keep people entrenched rather than alleviating their poverty, homelessness, mental health needs or addictions.

Canadian experiences with forms of guaranteed livable basic income demonstrate the potential for savings. Manitoba’s Mincome pilot decreased hospitalizations in Dauphin, Manitoba, by 8.5%. In recent years, a cash transfer project that provided $7,500 to members of Vancouver’s homeless population, though not a full guaranteed livable basic income, paid for itself in less than a year through savings within the shelter system alone.

Other costings from P.E.I. and the Basic Income Canada Network reinforce that through careful consideration of which tax measures and income supports could be replaced or adjusted, guaranteed income could be fully paid — delivered at zero net cost — while leaving no one with a below-average income worse off and, most significantly, it would find them better off.

Other options for fully funding guaranteed livable basic income could include harnessing the dollars that currently escape Canada via offshore tax avoidance and evasion by the wealthiest individuals and corporations. We look forward to seeing if this is encompassed in the measures introduced by the government yesterday in Bill C-2.

By implementing guaranteed basic income at a near-zero net cost rather than creating new money through debt financing, we can also ensure that it does not contribute to inflation.

In terms of human, social, health and economic well-being, it is the cost of failing to address poverty, not the cost of effective support measures, that Canada cannot afford.

A third misconception, thoroughly debunked through the committee study of the last version of this bill, relates to whether guaranteed livable basic income will disincentivize work. In reality, the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that hours worked would decrease by an insignificant amount: at most, 1.1%. A recent German pilot project showed no change in the number of hours worked by people who received a basic income.

Moreover, guaranteed livable basic income allows people to enter the workforce by ensuring stable access to housing and food and increasing their ability to afford child care, transportation and other employment costs.

During the Manitoba basic income pilot in the 1970s, most of those who worked less were caring for young children or took opportunities to complete high school or other training instead of having to work to support their families.

Participants in Ontario’s basic income pilot who were working before receiving basic income continued to work. Some took the opportunity to seek better jobs. Others were able to hone new job skills.

“Eddie” is one of many who saw their participation in the program as an opportunity not to quit work but to find work:

. . . some kind of gig or, you know, something modest . . . . Didn’t have to be CEO of some company or anything . . . . Just rebuild my confidence again . . . Because that really took a kicking for a while.

A review of research on Canadian cash transfer programs to families, such as the Canada Child Benefit, demonstrates that these measures increase financial security of families, which leads in turn to increased employment.

The concern that people will not work is not based in evidence. Too often it is rooted in engrained and harmful assumptions that:

. . . poverty is [somehow] the result of personal failings, rather than the failure of systems, labour market challenges, and government policies and programs.

These discriminatory myths obscure the sheer amount of work and determination that go into surviving poverty. More than half of people below the poverty line have employment income as their main source of support — they are working, but they are not being paid enough.

Before participating in the Ontario Basic Income Pilot, “Bethany” said:

I was like working like crazy, still broke, never going out, never seeing anybody. Like, just worked to the bone, exhausted.

The National Advisory Council on Poverty notes that the time and effort required to negotiate inadequate and inaccessible anti-poverty programs has turned poverty into a punitive, permanent, dead-end full-time job. As one Ontario disability benefit recipient noted to our office, if navigating poverty is a full-time job, “the pay sucks.”

Guaranteed livable basic income is a proven, cost-effective way to reduce poverty and support people in building economic capacity and contributing to their communities. The time for Canada to act is now.

In recent years, support for guaranteed livable basic income has continued to grow, with the concept featured among the top official policies of the federal party that just won re-election. We keep hearing, however, that now is not the time — not when we are faced with the challenges of recovering from the pandemic, inflation crises and tariffs.

I urge us to challenge these assumptions. Now is not the time to continue wasting $92 billion per year on poverty. Guaranteed livable basic income will save Canada money and shore up economic capacity.

As Canada faces a new reality of economic threats from our neighbour, Canadians — especially those with the least economic security — need and deserve reassurance that the economy will work for them.

Guaranteed livable basic income would mean that those affected by tariff-related threats to their jobs and income are not left behind but given opportunities to rebound. At a moment when leaders are urging Canadians to work and stand together, guaranteed livable basic income would ensure that all of us are in a position to do so. Particularly for those whom this country has too often let down — those struggling to find jobs, unable to afford food and rent, on the streets or in prisons — it would offer hope that, this time, they are not alone and that Canada will assist all to weather the economic challenges that we face together.

Honourable colleagues, let’s continue this next chapter of our work to make certain Canada builds communities where all are supported, resourced and empowered to contribute, where no one is allowed to fall through the gaps, and where all of us have a place to live and thrive. Surely it goes without saying that this is the Canadian way.

Meegwetch, thank you.

Yes.

Thank you very much for that question.

I think we see that. I tried to elucidate that a bit, but thank you for the opportunity to delve a bit more deeply.

We see the intergenerational impacts of poverty that are entrenched in our current social assistance schemes that keep people stuck in poverty. I think of the many examples of people who had an opportunity to get work but couldn’t actually afford to take a job because it meant they wouldn’t have any kind of health or prescription benefits as a result.

I also think of folks who couldn’t have access to subsidized housing if they took work. The idea that we would look at an approach that would encourage people to get on their feet is vitally important. When I was in some northern communities, I was struck by one Elder in particular saying to me that they wanted to develop an ecotourism business. They have all kinds of young people in the community who are unemployed and getting social assistance, but they can’t take them out on the land because then they’re not looking for the nonexistent jobs in the community and would lose the income they have.

This type of model would allow for those kinds of eventualities. It would be less judgmental. It would be less focused on blaming the individuals who, because of our decisions about policies that are currently implemented provincially, territorially and federally, are living in poverty on an intergenerational basis.

It impacts children; it impacts families and certainly many of the women I spoke to who talked about not being able to escape violence, in part, because they didn’t have the economic security to be able to take their children with them. That was a significant issue. Most recently, in my own community, I was speaking with a number of individual women from the shelter movement, and they actually initiated a public discussion around this so that the entire community would get behind the idea of a guaranteed livable basic income to assist women fleeing abuse. Thank you very much for the question.