Many excluded in Quebec’s basic income program, advocates say
Anti-poverty activists are praising the program as a good step toward helping people meet their basic needs, but say strict eligibility criteria exclude many of the province’s lowestincome residents
For the first time in many years, Monique Toutant thinks she might be able to buy herself some better groceries and a few new clothes.
As a longtime social assistance recipient, the 62-year-old Quebec City resident is used to pinching pennies, buying the strict minimum at the grocery store and saving for months for every purchase.
“Will I have enough money to get through the month? Will I have enough money to eat well? Will I have enough money because I have a doctor’s appointment in two days and I have to pay a bus ticket?” she said in a phone interview.
Toutant, who can’t work because of acute rheumatoid arthritis that prevents her from sitting or standing for long periods, is facing a little less hardship after her monthly cheque rose by more than $300 to about $1,548 at the beginning of January with the launch of the Quebec government’s basic income program.
The program, aimed at 84,000 Quebecers with a “severely limited capacity for employment” such as a chronic illness or mental health condition, will provide an increase of more than 28 per cent for a single person, the government says. Just as importantly, they will also have the ability to earn about $14,500 a year in wages — up from $200 a month — and have up to $20,000 in savings, all without losing benefits. They will also be able to live with a partner who earns a small paycheque without seeing their benefits clawed back. The program will cost about $1.5 billion a year.
Anti-poverty activists are praising the program as a good step toward helping people meet their basic needs, but say strict eligibility criteria exclude many of the province’s lowest-income residents.
Jean Lalande, a spokesperson for a welfare rights committee in Montreal’s Pointe-St-Charles, said the program addresses some of the problems with traditional welfare, which discourages people from taking steps to improve their situations by cutting benefits as soon as someone tries to get a job or save money.
However, he believes it should be offered to all of those on social assistance, including those earning the minimum welfare amount of $770 per month, who sometimes spend 80 or 90 per cent of their income on rent.
Lalande, as well as Serge Petitclerc of the Collectif pour un Québec sans pauvreté, said the rules for admission to social assistance are already very restrictive, and it can take years to have people’s health conditions formally recognized. By the time people are approved for higher benefits, their physical and mental health is likely to have further declined due to the effects of extreme poverty, they said.