Sheila Regehr, Chair, BICN
On September 1, 2022, the basic income movement lost Harvey Stevens after a long battle with cancer. As someone who loved statistics he calculated that on his last day he had live to 77.9506 years of life. Throughout his life he worked tirelessly on social justice and climate change issues.
There are few people with his ability to statistically model social policy changes, and we are so fortunate that he dedicated his time to building a crucial legacy for the movement for a guaranteed income. In earlier days, he worked on the 1970s Mincome experiments in Winnipeg and Dauphin, Manitoba.
We at the Basic Income Canada Network are immensely grateful to Harvey for the work that he has done more recently for various provinces and especially for the national modelling he did for us in Basic Income: Some Policy Options for Canada (2020), which broke new ground.
His energy, advice, skill, commitment and generosity in helping non-profit organizations like ours, in support of too many people who need better income security, was remarkable. Even close to the end, he talked about taking on a new project in the north to help as much as he could while he could. We will truly miss him.