A universal basic income for all Canadians – this conception seems remarkably engaging – specifically during a time when an ongoing crisis has affected the incomes of so many.
In a report written by journalist Roderick Benns on April 24, he reported that NDP leader Jagmeet Singh called for immediate assistance to all Canadians in the appearance of a universal basic income. According to Benns, more than a million people had lost their jobs since March.
The economic situation in this country and across the world is dire. Millions of Canadians have applied for the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit, as the effects of COVID-19 have trashed worldwide markets after the initiation of lockdown measures and other emergency preparations intended to terminate the range of the coronavirus.
So, why not take the plunge and build a plan to halt poverty altogether during this crisis? If properly introduced, a universal basic income might eradicate poverty in Canada, or at least stifle most of its devastating effects. The NDP are certainly onboard with the proposal, but even if this idea originated from leftward thinking, the foremost champion for a universal basic income years before the pandemic disrupted our livelihoods was Conservative Senator, Hugh Segal.
Segal’s Conservative credentials are impeccable. He acted as the legislative assistant to former Progressive Conservative, Robert Stanfield. Segal was an aide to Ontario premier Bill Davis – he was also Brian Mulroney’s chief of staff. Segal was appointed to the Senate in 2005 by Liberal Prime Minister, Paul Martin.
During an interview on TVO with Steve Paikin in 2010, the presenter referred to Segal as a Red Tory. Red Tories are Conservatives who support ideas of socially equality from a right-of-centre viewpoint. This brand of conservatism is influenced by Irish statesman, Edmund Burke, who believed society required an organic hierarchy to retain its natural order. Not surprisingly, this kind of conservatism is more prevalent in countries such as Canada, where monarchies are the official heads of state.
Red Tories are a disappearing breed in Canada. Segal’s politics are much more centrist than the majority of Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives by comparison. Canada’s Conservative Party had been taken over by American-influenced neoconservatism in 2003, when the Reform-rooted Canadian Alliance merged with the Progressive Conservatives – a move shifting the party further to the right.
Segal is passionate about eliminating poverty in this country through the introduction of a universal basic income. During his discussion with Paikin on TVO, he said “To improve the economy and strengthen innovation, income security has to be on the table.”
His published memoir, Bootstraps Need Boots, is a recollection of the senator’s childhood in Montreal, where he grew up in a poor immigrant family. When Prime Minister Diefenbaker visited his school in 1962, Segal became motivated to join the Conservative Party. The memoir also discussed the senator’s views on a basic annual income intended to terminate the influences of poverty in this country.
“It would work the way the Guaranteed Income Supplement works for seniors,” he told Christopher Guly in the Tyee. “Everybody has to file their taxes. If you fall beneath a certain level, you’d be automatically topped up.”
Segal was close to having his ideal realized in Ontario, before the Doug Ford government ceased the experiment in July 2018.
“The recommendation I made was to take people from 45 per cent to 70 per cent of the poverty line and increase the monthly benefit from $640 per individual to $1,300. Plus, if they did find work, which they’d be encouraged to do, they would pay 50 per cent tax on half of what they earned, but keep the rest. When they reached the same amount as the basic grant, they’d pay the same level of taxation as everybody else in the economy,” Segal said as he further explained this inspiring proposal to Guly.
