By Senator Kim Pate
This week, as Canada’s first ministers met to prioritize “nation-building” projects, Senate debate on Bill S-206 highlighted the capacity of a national framework for guaranteed livable basic income to shape an economic future to which all Canadians can aspire, one that invests in people and builds up the capacity of communities.
In these challenging economic times, guaranteed livable basic income—cash transfers sufficient to live on and available to those in need—would be a promise to Canadians that we are truly in this together. This type of program could build up safer and more resilient communities, ensuring that people can rebound out of poverty, that no one is abandoned to crisis, and that all are in a position to contribute.
For a relatively low net cost of perhaps $3 billion annually, guaranteed livable basic income could also save and allow more effective reinvestment of $80+ billion that Canada currently spends every year keeping people in poverty, from inadequate and stigmatizing social assistance schemes, to preventable healthcare and criminal legal system costs, to lost economic opportunities.
As a result of Indigenous, provincial, territorial, and municipal leadership regarding guaranteed livable basic income, including the Calls for Justice of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Canadians possess a wealth of empirical data and personal experience demonstrating the benefits of forms of basic income, from the Canada Child Benefit, Guaranteed Income Supplement for Seniors and the albeit far-too-limited Canada Disability Benefit, to provincial programs and pilots.
“Bill S-206 would provide a framework process to bring Indigenous, federal, provincial, territorial, municipal governments together with community experts to begin working on how a Canadian guaranteed livable basic income could be developed and delivered,” said Senator Kim Pate, sponsor of the bill. “In doing so, we can build up communities where all of us are supported and empowered to contribute, innovate and care for ourselves and one another. We could spend less on poverty and invest more in people. Surely this is the Canadian way.”
Senator Pate’s speech on Bill S-206: https://senparlvu.parl.gc.ca/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2/20250604/-1/14223?mediaStartTime=20250604164142&viewMode=3&globalStreamId=16