Basic income pilot project to end March 31

Thestar.com
September 4, 2018
Kristin Rushowy

The Ford government will end the basic income pilot project March 31, saying that gives participants “enough time to transition” without putting an “undue burden” on the public purse.

As a result, the program for low-income Ontarians -- introduced by the previous Liberal government -- will now end a year before it was scheduled to wrap up.

Jodi Dean, left, and Jayne Cardno are among 2,000 low-income people in the Hamilton/Brantford area participating in Ontario's basic income pilot project, which the Progressive Conservative government now says will end a year earlier than scheduled.

“We have a broken social service system. A research project that helps less than 4,000 people is not the answer and provides no hope to the nearly 2 million Ontarians who are trapped in the cycle of poverty,” said Lisa MacLeod, the province’s minister of children, community and social services, in a written statement.

“We are winding down the basic income research project in a compassionate way,” MacLeod said, adding that the “lengthy runway” will see final payments distributed at the end of the fiscal year.

The government is already facing a proposed class-action lawsuit by four participants for breach of contract of the three-year program that began in April 2017.

The basic income project enrolled low-income recipients from Hamilton, Thunder Bay and Lindsay, providing individuals with a stable income of $16,989 and up to $24,027 for couples.

Researchers with the $50-million a year project were studying if the income would help improve participants’ lives and health.

Tom Cooper, director of the Hamilton Roundtable on Poverty Reduction, said the timeline “does provide a bit of breathing room for participants” who didn’t know when they’d be cut off “and didn’t know if they could cover rent for September ... (cancelling it) left them in a terrible position over the last month, without people knowing how they were going to survive into September.”

The deadline “at least provides them with that time frame, which I think the government was ethically obligated to do.”

He said the participants have been “treated absolutely cruelly” by the provincial government.

“People entered into this in good faith” and were deceived because the PCs promised twice before the election to continue the pilot, he also said.

Before Doug Ford was elected premier, a senior official in his campaign told the Star a Progressive Conservative government would keep the project going through to completion.

However, MacLeod later told reporters that maintaining the program was not part of the party’s official campaign platform.

MacLeod has pledged a 100-day review of social assistance and poverty-reduction plans for the province, and a report is expected in early November.

She has said that if the basic income pilot project was expanded across the province, it would come with an unaffordable $17 billion price tag.

Some advocates have been urging the federal government to take over the pilot, saying it’s an important project that could, down the line, lead to lower costs for governments.

When the pilot was first introduced in Ontario, all three provincial party leaders expressed support, including then-PC leader Patrick Brown.

Dr. Kwame McKenzie, a psychiatrist and CEO of the Wellesley Institute who is also a University of Toronto professor, said the additional months “give people a chance to make their plans.”

McKenzie, the government’s special research adviser on the pilot, said “people all over the world are struggling with this question ... it’s a really good question for society in general” about the benefits of such a program. He called the loss of it and the research “disappointing.”