Social Policy in Ontario

Basic income guarantee would lessen poverty

Posted on June 12, 2015 in Social Security Debates

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TheWhig.com – Opinion Column
June 11, 2015.   Elaine Power

Four million hungry Canadians. More than a million kids living in Canadian households where there is not enough food. Almost 20,000 Kingstonians living in poverty. More than 6,500 people using Kingston’s Partners in Mission Food Bank.

These are overwhelming statistics. Where do we even begin to tackle hunger?

For more than 30 years, we have turned to food banks to solve hunger. The idea that food banks can make hunger disappear is appealing in its simplicity. Hungry people need food. If we give food to hungry people, then they won’t be hungry anymore. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, the food bank solution to hunger isn’t working. Last fall, the executive director of the Partners in Mission Food Bank described hunger in Kingston as a “crisis” that is “off the scale.” There are simply too many hungry people and there is not enough food.

It is not the fault of Partners in Mission or its many good-hearted volunteers that Kingston’s food bank can’t meet the demand. The problem is just too big. Food banks regularly restrict how often clients can get food and how much food they can receive. Even still, many food banks run low on food and some even have to close their doors until the shelves are restocked.

Don’t we just have to donate more food? If only more of us donated more food, then surely the problem would be solved. This is what we are told repeatedly in food drive campaigns.

From the grocery store to the hockey game to the muffler repair service, we are continually implored to donate to “drive out hunger” or “fill the food bank.” Increasingly, we are asked to “get the word out” by using social media hashtags and posting photos of our donations.

What do these campaigns accomplish?

Undoubtedly, food drive campaigns get some much-needed food and money to local food banks. They provide great publicity for their corporate sponsors. They help companies appear to be good corporate citizens who care about local communities. They give those of us who participate a sense that we are “doing something” about a terrible problem in our midst.

What they don’t do is solve hunger.

Research shows that most hungry Canadians never even go to a food bank. And even those who do can never get enough food to keep them from being hungry.

Food drives cannot solve hunger because they do not address the underlying problem of poverty.

Across the country, political leaders, medical doctors, public health officials and ordinary community members are recognizing that the most effective and important thing we could do to end hunger is to provide everyone who needs it with a basic income guarantee or BIG. A BIG would ensure that everyone has enough money to buy the food they need.

The list of BIG supporters is growing every week. It includes P.E.I.’s new premier, Wade MacLauchlin, Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson, former Kingston and the Islands senator Hugh Segal, former Toronto mayor and current Senator Art Eggleton, Medicare defender Danielle Martin, the Simcoe Muskoka Public Health Unit, the Ontario-based Association of Local Public Health Agencies (alPHa). And the list goes on.

In Kingston, a group of local citizens, including this writer, has joined with the Basic Income Canada Network to build support for BIG. An effective basic income guarantee would enable all Canadians to meet basic needs and to live with dignity. It would solve the problem of hunger by ending its underlying cause, poverty. It would address the income insecurity that is affecting more and more Canadians as full-time, permanent jobs are becoming increasingly difficult to find. It would unleash our creativity and entrepreneurial spirits. And it would reward the countless hours of unpaid and volunteer work that so many of us do.

Over time, a basic income guarantee would more than pay for itself with savings in health care, education and the justice system.

And once there were no more hungry Canadians, a basic income guarantee would mean that food banks could finally close.

Elaine Power is an associate professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University and co-founder of the Kingston Action Group for a basic income guarantee.

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Tags: economy, featured, Health, ideology, mental Health, poverty, standard of living

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