Sheila Regehr[1]
Chair, Basic Income Canada
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 includes the right to life, liberty and personal security, an adequate standard of living, including food, clothing and housing, the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, and more. It includes the right to social security (Article 22) ‘in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control’.
Governments have a responsibility to enact policy that progressively enables people to exercise these social and economic as well as political rights. In today’s world, if you do not have money you cannot exercise your rights to the goods and services that contribute to life, health and security, or your right to participate in society and the economy.
Public services are a powerful means to help achieve the benefits of rights related to education, health and housing for example. But services cannot replace the synergistic need for autonomous income.
And this is where a basic income comes in, by providing government income guarantees that are adequate to meet basic needs, unconditional, and secure. This is especially important when the “circumstances beyond our control” include global pandemics (like the Covid-19 one has left many people experiencing long-term consequences), extreme weather events, threats to democracy and other contributors to the polycrisis we are facing.
Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors are a form of basic income. Income guarantees for families with children are a partial basic income. Our relatives, neighbours and fellow citizens who are 18-64 have no comparable social security. If the market, and market-based programs like Employment Insurance, fail them, there is only recourse to last ditch social assistance.
Social assistance does not fit into a human rights framework. Benefits are historically not adequate to support any reasonable measure of health and wellbeing. But the more fundamental flaw is that they only come with many conditions and exclusions; that makes them stigmatizing and insecure. This income support is not your right as a human being; it is conditional on meeting a plethora of rules to prove you are ‘deserving’ in the eyes of a bureaucratic system and too often the eyes of a particular bureaucrat. Classifications of ‘deservedness’ also highly open to discrimination. This approach does not support security or equality of rights and it certainly does not support mental health.
Human rights are universal; the same rules apply to all. For a basic income, it does not mean that everyone gets a cheque for the same amount of money—far from it. It means that whenever anyone is in circumstances where their income is inadequate, or their insecurity puts their wellbeing at high risk, there is adequate, stable income security. It is income security that individuals and families can freely use to meet their own most pressing needs and support their own talents and aspirations and their communities.
A basic income guarantee is social justice; it is human.
[1] This article is written in an individual capacity. It is grounded in my work as a founding member of Basic Income Canada Network and a former Executive Director of the National Council of Welfare, the insights of many allies in this work, and involvement with the United Nations during my federal government years. It was originally published in the newsletter Spero. Visit this edition here: Fall Issue of Spero Released — Canadian Poverty Institute