Lindsay basic income test halted

Luis Segura of Lindsay said it was “horrible” to find out that Ontario’s basic income pilot project is about to be cancelled by the new Progressive Conservative government.

Segura and his wife Leanna have four children under the age of eight, and they own a healthfood restaurant in Lindsay called Fresh FueLL.

He said they have been receiving $800 monthly through the project to help them make ends meet as they “fast-track” the growth of their restaurant

(which they opened in 2015).

The basic income project started in April 2017 and was expected to be carried out over three years. It provided payments to 4,000 low-income people in Lindsay, Hamilton, Brantford, Thunder Bay.

But on Tuesday afternoon Premier Doug Ford’s Ontario government announced it will wind it down.

“To be honest, it was horrible news in the sense that we were just getting used to the assistance and balancing our lives around it,” Segura said.

“But I feel for people in worse situations than ours .... I have faith in my wife and I that do what we have to do to keep going.”

In a news conference Tuesday in Toronto, Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod said the previous Liberal government spent money it didn’t have on “handouts that actually do little if anything to break the cycle of poverty.”

The province’s first steps toward reform will be to cancel the basic income pilot project and to scrap previous government’s plan to raise Ontario Disability Support Program and Ontario Works rates by three per cent, Canadian Press reported.

Instead the government will raise OW and ODSP rates by 1.5 per cent, said MacLeod, adding the decision was made “on compassionate grounds.”

“What I’m announcing today is about restoring dignity to Ontarians,” she said.

“But let me be clear: the best social program is a job, for those who can get one,” she said, adding she and her colleagues will work to get people back into the workforce.

Labour Minister Laurie Scott, whose Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock riding includes Lindsay, wasn’t available for comment when The Examiner sent her a request for interview by email Tuesday night.

Christian Harvey, the director of Warming Room Community Ministries in Peterborough, said it’s “ridiculous” to decrease social assistance and to cancel the basic income project.

“I think we, as a province, have to experiment with creative ways so no one is hungry or goes without adequate, safe shelter,” he said. “Basic income was that creative answer.”

There’s been a recent increase in people seeking food at Warming Room Community Ministries, Harvey said (they also provide emergency shelter). A lot of people in Peterborough are struggling these days, he said.

“We have to be a province that thinks of everyone – not just those who have the most,” Harvey said.

Susan Hubay, co-chairwoman of the Basic Income Peterborough Network, said the cancellation of the pilot project left her “devastated” for the 4,000 participants.

Hubay said she attended a North American conference for advocates of basic income in Hamilton recently, where she heard people speak about how receiving basic income was changing their lives.

“They spoke of their health – and of the immediate reduction of stress,” Hubay said. “Right now I’m thinking mostly of them .... I feel so devastated for those people.”

Meanwhile Segura said he and his wife will have to “buckle down and grind harder” to keep their bills paid.

“Assistance or no assistance — we’ve got to make this work.”