Basic income could provide the breathing space so many need
Twenty years ago, the prominent English historian Tony Judt concluded his magnum opus by looking back at the long boom that unfolded after 1945.
The so-called golden years (roughly 1945-late to 1970s) had faded into the mists of history. In the postwar years, Judt pointed to “glaring contrasts between wealth and poverty, prosperity and insecurity, private affluence and public squalor.” Working-class people, particularly a growing precariat, were now exposed to “levels of economic insecurity unprecedented in living memory.”
Two decades later, two Canadian writers from different ends of the political spectrum were tightly focused on insecurity. Former Bank of Canada head Stephen Poloz came out with a book called “The Next Age of Uncertainty.” At the same time Astra Taylor published “The Age of Insecurity,” the title of her 2023 Massey Lectures. Each recommends basic income as one way to address the insecurity gnawing away at so many Canadians.
Scientists say we have entered an age of global “polycrisis”: food and housing insecurity; climate breakdown; stagflation; environmental degradation; war; ideological extremism; authoritarian politics and a crisis of democracy; massive economic inequality; and a general mistrust of institutions.
Each would be bad enough on its own. The polycrisis, however, signals the deep interconnections of systems — political and economic, environmental and cultural — under stress. A crisis in one system produces crises in the others.
The global COVID-19 pandemic did not produce this polycrisis. But it sharpened existing tensions. Pandemics are deeply unsettling, producing destabilizing effects that can last for years or even decades. Hardly a wonder that a sense of insecurity stalks the land.
The affordability crisis. Record numbers visiting food banks. Encampments of poor people mushrooming in big cities and smaller centres. Young people, having given up on owning a home, move back to live with parents. Rents are stratospheric. Signs of climate breakdown abound, with record levels of snow and rain, soaring temperatures and unprecedented firestorms.
Unsurprisingly, a populist Official Opposition has gained political traction by repeating ad hominem attacks, insisting that Canada is “broken.” The Liberal government is reeling, its polling numbers in free fall. Canada’s system of public provision has been shredded by decades of market fundamentalism. There’s a desperate need for fresh ideas.
As 2024 began, Canada’s stubborn basic income (BI) movement was taking heart, telling itself that the idea of an income floor, universally available to all who need it, would provide a sense of stability in these uncertain times. While no silver bullet, BI could begin to help to address affordability. It could help restore a common sense purpose, mending frayed social bonds. The income security that comes with basic income could provide some breathing space for people to imagine and implement new, less destructive ways of living together on the planet.
Last Nov. 20, senior economists, policy specialists and politicians published a groundbreaking study providing evidence that it is now time to put BI to the test using our smallest province as a laboratory.
Prince Edward Island’s Marie Burge is the dean of BI promoters in Canada. The octogenarian’s optimism is based in part on the need to address the stain of poverty. Under her tireless leadership, P.E.I.’s four political parties have come to a consensus in their support for basic income. She knows Canada “has the resources to make it happen.” Her tiny province would be an ideal launching pad for an eventual national program. It just needs federal co-operation and funding.
Coalition Canada, a national BI advocacy group, is busily gathering petitions for members of Parliament to present in the House of Commons, calling on Ottawa to begin immediate negotiations with P.E.I.’s government. The aim? Implementation of a five-year BI demonstration program in the province.
P.E.I. clinical psychologist Susan Hartley points to the province’s crumbling health-care system, its rising population of unhoused people and the grinding lifelong health effects of growing up poor. With one of the highest poverty rates in the country, one in four children on the Island lives in poverty.
Burge insists Ottawa must negotiate with the government of P.E.I. to fund a demonstration project. Why is nothing happening? The easy answer is political will. Away from P.E.I.’s political consensus, there’s skepticism in the political class.
BI clearly has its opponents, right and left. Ontario’s Ford government took just a few weeks after its 2018 election to break its campaign commitment to keep funding Ontario’s high-profile basic income pilot. If completed, the pilot would have been Canada’s — and the world’s — most comprehensive test of BI.
The B.C. New Democrats formed a minority government with Green Party support in 2017. The two-party deal committed the NDP to conduct a study of how to inaugurate a BI pilot. But the NDP proceeded to assign BI critics to examine whether BI was even a good idea. The predictable thumbs down amounted to a betrayal.
The polycrisis will not disappear if politicians cling to old policies no longer suited to urgent contemporary realities. Basic income offers a hopeful stabilizing force in an era of destabilization. A practical means of reducing insecurity.
As things fall apart, it’s an idea that won’t go away.
KINGSTON WRITER JAMIE SWIFT IS THE AUTHOR OF “THE CASE FOR BASIC INCOME: FREEDOM, SECURITY, JUSTICE” WITH ELAINE POWER, PROFESSOR OF KINESIOLOGY AND HEALTH STUDIES AT QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY.