What an excellent title for a book about an important subject which should be front of mind for every Christian. The author of Boot Straps Need Boots, Hugh Segal, is a rarity these days, an actual progressive conservative. For years he has advocated for a guaranteed annual income for Canadians in poverty and helped design the pilot project in Ontario which the current regressive conservative government summarily cut, as well as quashing a scheduled increase to the minimum wage. Here is how Segal describes a guaranteed income in a recent interview in The Tyee
The proposal that I made to the Province of Ontario was that rather than the present level of welfare, which is fairly rule-laden, massively over-administered, and forces the people who work in those departments to be auditors and police officers about how people are living as opposed to helping people out of poverty.
Those welfare programs across Canada generally do not pay more than 50 per cent of what it takes to be at the poverty line or a little bit above.
The recommendation I made was to take people from 45 per cent to 70 per cent of the poverty line, and increase the monthly benefit from $640 per individual to $1,300. Plus if they did find work, which they’d be encouraged to do, they would pay 50 per cent tax on half of what they earned but keep the rest. When they reached the same amount as the basic grant, they’d pay the same level of taxation as everybody else in the economy.
Seventy-per-cent of Canadians who are beneath the poverty line have jobs. Some, in our big cities, have more than one, but can’t get above the poverty line because of the costs in their jurisdictions. So the notion that this is about people who sit on their couch, eat bonbons and watch soap operas is an ancient right-wing trope for which there is simply no justification.
The current Ontario government campaigned on the notion of job creation as the best avenue out of poverty, but have you heard anything about how that initiative is being rolled out? Instead we hear of endless cuts to programs for the vulnerable with reversals coming only when there is public pressure. And of course those who are at the margins are often voiceless, unless advocacy comes from organizations such as Citizens for Public Justice or local groups such as the Poverty Round Table.
Thank you, Hugh Segal, for continuing to be such a thoughtful voice for the poor and challenging the false ideology of some conservatives.
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