by Jane Ledwell, Executive Director of the PEI Advisory Council on the Status of Women; member of the PEI Working Group for a Livable Income<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Throughout 2020, the Premier\u2019s Council for Recovery and Growth heard from Islanders across many sectors about our recommendations to move PEI forward after the COVID-19 pandemic. Topping the list of recommendations to the Premier\u2019s Council was basic income guarantee. This tells us that support for basic income guarantee in PEI is a groundswell. Compassionate Islanders want neighbours, friends, and families to have guaranteed livable income to meet their basic needs month to month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In its summary report, People First<\/em>, the Premier\u2019s Council included \u201ca form of basic income\u201d among its guiding principles and its key actions. However, there is a lot of slipperiness along the slope of \u201ca form of\u201d basic income guarantee. Within days of the Premier\u2019s Council report, the Government of PEI announced that a 2019 enhanced social assistance pilot for \u201csecure income\u201d would be expanded and renamed as a \u201ctargeted basic income guarantee.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Any improvement that brings social assistance levels to a more livable level is good news. Sadly, this \u201ctargeted\u201d program is far from a basic income guarantee we want. What is more, it goes against the sound principles of a basic income guarantee that were unanimously adopted by the PEI Legislature in the reports of the Special Committee on Poverty in PEI!<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is good about the targeted program is that it will provide more support to over 600 selected social assistance recipients, and their income support rates will be measured against the \u201cmarket basket measure\u201d (the local cost of goods and services to meet basic needs).<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is bad about the targeted program is that it offers only 85%, not 100%, of the market basket costs. What is worse is that it hand-picks just 600 people for help, based on the criterion that they have \u201cseverely limited capacity to work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first principle of basic income guarantee is that people are eligible \u2013 and therefore worthy \u2013 not by virtue of our work status or \u201climitations\u201d on ability to work, but by virtue of our human right to live without poverty. We are eligible because we are inherently worth supporting to live in dignity. Basic income guarantee principles underscore that we each contribute to society by who we are, not just by what we do. From those principles, pure and simple, a basic income guarantee would provide people whose income falls below a livable level a top-up to a livable level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The targeted program bases eligibility to meet basic needs on work status, not basic worth. The decision to meet the needs only of those assessed as facing \u201csevere limitations\u201d on their ability to work tells us the social assistance program\u2019s founding principle is that paid work is the first or only legitimate source of income.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The basic income guarantee\u2019s promise of dignity flows from universal eligibility to apply, regardless of work status. No need to demonstrate to government that we face destitution. No need to lay bare for an income support worker the circumstances of job loss or relationship breakdown or intergenerational poverty or hard luck that led to the need to ask for help. No need to prove ability or disability to people in systems that build the barriers that limit accessibility. No need to prove \u201csevere limitations\u201d on our ability to work to be deemed worthy of sufficient income to meet our basic needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The new targeted program must not be used to tick off the \u201cbasic income guarantee\u201d box on a checklist of actions coming out of the Premier\u2019s Council for Recovery and Growth. The basic income guarantee we want must meet the principles of basic income guarantee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The PEI Working Group for a Livable Income calls on the government to rename its targeted program to support Islanders in need. Do not sully or confuse the principles of a basic income guarantee by calling this program by that name. Instead, we call on government to continue its good and principled work to collaborate with the federal government for a true basic income guarantee, worthy of the name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Jane Ledwell, Executive Director of the PEI Advisory Council on the Status of Women; member of the PEI Working Group for a Livable Income Throughout 2020, the Premier\u2019s Council for Recovery and Growth heard from Islanders across many sectors about our recommendations to move PEI forward after the COVID-19 pandemic. Topping the list of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92738,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peiwgli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peiwgli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peiwgli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peiwgli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peiwgli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peiwgli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79027,"href":"https:\/\/peiwgli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79026\/revisions\/79027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peiwgli.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/92738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peiwgli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peiwgli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peiwgli.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}