[homeles_ot-l] Details of Basic Income Pilot announcement this morning

[Linda Lalonde]

Hi folks,
The Backgrounder with the nitty-gritty is at: https://news.ontario.ca/mcss/en/2017/04/ontarios-basic-income-pilot.html. 
It seems to be pretty good news and nails most of the concerns people raised in discussions here. I had anticipated an October start so we've gained a few months which also means it will wrap up earlier and broader implementation will start sooner. The 'fall' start in Lindsay will hopefully not be taken as the overall start. The examples given in the Backgrounder show an overall increase in income and clearly say that it's a replacement, not a top-up, for social assistance. I would have liked to see a larger number than 4,000 in the sample size since, when spread over 3 sites, that doesn't necessarily allow for all the combinations and permutations of life situations in the low income community. 
I do find it odd that they didn't provide the figures for a single person since that's where the biggest income contrast would be seen and that's where a lot of advocacy has been concentrated in the province over the last number of years. There's also no mention of the treatment of the Trillium Benefit which is something that would affect more people than CPP which is listed. The impact on a couple currently on OW will also be significant.
It doesn't say when the 'three years' starts but, given that money is going to flow in the summer and that there will be expenses before then, I would expect it to be April 1, 2017 and continuing over 3 fiscal years, i.e. wrapping up March 31, 2020. {And then they'll look back and evaluate it with 20/20 vision!! Sorry, couldn't help that one!} We'll need to wait until Thursday to see if there are other details released then but this looks like a fairly complete announcement.
Linda. “Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.” - Herman Melville
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://list.web.net/pipermail/homeles_ot-l/attachments/20170424/58822676/attachment.html>