The Liberal grassroots have backed at least four resolutions for basic income programs at policy conventions including by a vote of 77 per cent at a virtual convention held in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it has never appeared in a campaign platform.

The idea of a basic personal income in Canada gained traction after the pandemic when the government provided an emergency income benefit to millions of Canadians who lost their jobs because of COVID-19 restrictions.

NDP MP Leah Gazan introduced a private member’s bill in 2021 to create a national framework for a universal basic income but the bill never made it beyond first reading.

A similar bill introduced in the Senate by Sen. Kim Pate was in the midst of being studied by a committee when Parliament was prorogued last month.

In 2021, the parliamentary budget officer published an analysis suggesting it would cost $85 billion to provide $17,000 to low-income Canadian families and would cut poverty rates in half.

  • grte
    111·
    2 days ago

    Carney’s housing policies aren’t offering anything that Gould isn’t, except that Gould is promising to make non-market cooperative housing an important plank of her platform, where I happen to think that non-market solutions are the actual fix to most of Canada’s current problems.

    But really, I was never voting Liberal anyways on account of their position that the ‘right’ to strike is contingent on the approval of the sitting government.