Council votes unanimously in favour of a push for a Basic Income program.
Westfort Councillor Kristen Oliver brought forward the motion Monday night, adding the advocacy will continue even though it doesn’t appear to be top of mind for the federal government.
Current River Ward Councillor Andrew Foulds called the move the closest thing to a ‘no brainer’ that he can think of.
“I’m very pleased that Councillor Oliver brought this forward and I’m honoured that she allowed me to second the motion because this moves the needle and in terms of a pandemic recovery, this is it,” says Foulds.
Thunder Bay was one of three communities in 2018 involved in a Basic Income Pilot Project aimed to give a fixed income for three years to people with low or no incomes.
Mayor Bill Mauro, who was in the Liberal government serving as the Minister of Municipal Affairs, was asked by Premier Kathleen Wynne to sit on an advisory committee that looked at the program to see whether it was feasible.
“The chair of the committee who went off and did the research that informed our policy on the project was Hugh Segal,” notes Mauro. “It was not lost on me that the committee had a Conservative person who was there and came forward with the report to us and the government very much supporting that this program had an economic benefit and was the right thing to do, in his opinion.
The Liberals started distributing payments in the program in October 2017, in August 2018 the project was scrapped by the incoming Progressive Conservative government.