Interest in GLI spreads

When I first started working on guaranteed livable income (GLI) two years ago, it seemed like a pretty marginal idea. There were policy wonks and activists who were interested in and excited by the idea, but the mainstream policy and anti-poverty community either weren’t aware of the idea or weren’t impressed by its prospects. It seemed too big a shift to be possible, too challenging a conversation to kick-start with Canadians.

I myself was brand new to the idea, and very excited about it. But given the lack of awareness and lack of attention paid to GLI, I was cautious in my optimism, believing that there would be a long, hard, public education effort ahead of the guaranteed income network.

I could never have predicted then how the idea has taken off in people’s imaginations. The energy certainly crystallized with the large Canadian presence at the BIEN International Congress in Dublin and the creation of BIEN Canada, and our first event, the conference in Ottawa last month.

But there’s been some media attention paid to GLI recently too. Here are the highlights:

Last week, Janice Harvey, President of the New Brunswick Green Party, published an op-ed in the Telegraph-Journal calling GLI “an idea whose time has come.” Harvey applauds the attention paid to poverty recently in New Brunswick, but cautions that solutions rather than administrative tinkering are required. She calls for a living wage (one that allows workers to both survive and thrive) and a guaranteed livable income. She argues GLI will replace our piecemeal, ineffective system with an approach that treats people with dignity while promoting their well-being.

A week earlier, Stephen Hume had a column in the Vancouver Sun that also called for consideration of guaranteed income. Hume considers the prospects of employment – jobless recovery, more people needing jobs than jobs available, inadequate employment insurance – and argues that the time has come to re-think our whole approach to income stabilization. In response, he calls for serious public debate about the option of guaranteed annual income.

Meanwhile, on the radio, Michael Enright is doing a fall series on poverty on The Sunday Edition. On October 18, he had Senator Hugh Segal on his show to offer an introduction to poverty issues in Canada, and to speak about what can be done. Senator Segal is one of the most prominent supporters of GLI in Canada.

Enright followed this session with a conversation with Ron Hikel, former Executive Director of the Mincome experiment, and Dr. Evelyn Forget, a researcher at the University of Manitoba who has studied the impact of the Mincome experiment. They describe the experiment – how it worked, what happened, and the outcomes that have been discovered through Dr. Forget’s research. This section basically covers Dr. Forget’s presentation from the BIEN Canada conference.

I cannot recommend this interview highly enough. Enright gives all of his guests adequate time to speak thoroughly about the issue, and he asks pertinent and insightful questions. The result is a very good, in-depth introduction to poverty in Canada and the prospects of GLI in solving poverty. You can listen to the show here (scroll down to October 18). The interview with Senator Segal starts just before the 8 minute mark, while the Mincome interview starts right around 28 minutes.

Finally, Andrew Jackson of the Progressive Economics Forum has posted the notes from his presentation at the BIEN Canada conference on his blog. Andrew focuses on the wages aspect of income security, although he does admit that some kind of basic income program is also necessary. His primary concern is that an income security program becomes a subsidy for employers if there are not also efforts to promote high wages through a combination of living wage laws and collective bargaining.