Evelyn Forget: Basic Income in Canada

Stuart Murray  0:00  
This podcast was recorded on the ancestral lands, on treaty one territory, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe Cree Oji, Cree Dakota and the Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Metis nation.

Amanda Logan (Voiceover)  0:19  
This is humans on rights, a podcast advocating for the education of human rights. Here's your host, Stuart Murray,

Stuart Murray  0:31  
here's a headline. Advocates for low income earners call for an end to a minimum wage legislation creation of a living wage. There has been a lot of media coverage on the issue of a living wage, a basic income, a guaranteed annual income. Lot of definitions around this. And today, my guest is an expert when it comes to the subject of health and social implications of poverty and inequality. And we're going to get into a whole range of discussions about the importance, and she will give us a definition of what is the right terminology, living wage, guaranteed. Living wage, guaranteed basic income. Lots of discussion, but I'm thrilled and delighted to be joined today by Evelyn Fauci. Evelyn, welcome to humans on rights. Delighted to be here. So Evelyn, before we get into this conversation which is important, and I'm thrilled and delighted for you to be here. Tell our listeners a little bit about yourself.

Evelyn Forget  1:25  
Sure, I'm an economist. I work in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Manitoba in community health sciences, and I've focused on health implications of poverty and the role of social programs in mitigating that for a long time, most recently, I've looked at Basic Income rather carefully and asked what would happen if we introduced a basic income in Canada. Evelyn,

Stuart Murray  1:49  
thanks for that, because, you know, you have done some research. What does poverty look like today in Manitoba?

Evelyn Forget  1:55  
Certainly, poverty still exists. It would have been nice to say that we'd solved the problem income, as you might know, was a short, a very short, Basic Income experiment that took place in the 1970s and at the time, people believed that, you know, we had a solution. We had a solution to poverty. But it doesn't take a great deal of it doesn't take a great deal of time walking around the city and talking to people in Winnipeg to realize that there are a lot of families who are having trouble making ends meet, paying their rent, feeding their kids, and living reasonable lives. So Evelyn

Stuart Murray  2:33  
just on that min come. And I guess that's the term, and I think it stands for Manitoba minimum income was kind of min come, as how it came across, or is there? Yeah, okay, so So on that. I mean, that was done in the 70s, Evelyn, that's right. And so there was an NDP government, provincially, a federal Liberal government, I believe, at the time. What was the element that sort of ignited that discussion, that moved it from a discussion Evelyn into actually doing something?

Evelyn Forget  3:00  
Well, it's interesting. There was a after the Second World War, if we can go back that far, there was a rethinking in North America. A lot of people came home from the war, came back to the US in particular, and looked around and noticed for the first time that there was a lot of poverty in this very rich country they lived in, and in the United States, that led to a lot of advocacy for poverty reduction programs and the war on poverty. And as part of the war on poverty in the US, they ran three experiments, three basic income experiments, and Canada, being Canada, said, well, we need our own you know, we're not the US we need to selves. And so a little bit after the three US experiments began, the decision was made federally to introduce a Basic Income experiment in Canada. And the new NDP government in Manitoba was pretty quick off the mark, so they actually volunteered to be part of it, and the project was introduced with Manitoba paying 25% of the cost and the Feds paying 75% of the cost. The program ran from about nine. Let me see if I can get this right, 1975 to 1979 but the money owed to the families for about three years, and there were two sites in that experiment, both Winnipeg and the little town of Dauphin. And in Winnipeg, they ran it as the same way that the US experiments were being run. That is, they came the experimenters came into town and selected a small group of people and another group of matched participants. And the idea was that one group would get a basic income, the other group would make do with whatever programs were in place. And at the end of the day, they'd look at the two groups and see if there was a difference. Dauphin was a little bit different because it was a small town. They made the program available to everybody who lived in. Often, it didn't mean everybody got the money, but if your income fell below the appropriate threshold, you got the promise that you could receive the money. So that's effectively how it was set up. So,

Stuart Murray  5:10  
you know, I mean, this is a human rights podcast, and I mean the whole issue of a living wage, you know, is a human right. But there's also a lot of sensitivity. I guess Evelyn about and I and the word won't come to me what it is, but it's, you know, when you look and say, we need you to do to basically determine that you're living below the poverty line. We need to, you know, sort of, have you come forward and or we will, the we, the you know, the the governments you know, the the the Almighty's, we will designate the fact that you are living below the poverty line. And I think, you know, there's an element of that where it's a bit embarrassing to be, you know, singled out as somebody that's not making it in today's society. Was that ever an issue there? Did that come up, or did people sort of say, Look, this is so incredibly unique that we just want to find a way to see, can it work? How will it work? And so we embrace it.

Evelyn Forget  6:05  
It's interesting. Recipients certainly were aware of that. And there were, and often, for example, many people who refused to accept welfare. Welfare at the time, can

Stuart Murray  6:16  
I just stop for one second? Evelyn, was there welfare at the time that this conversation?

Evelyn Forget  6:20  
There was a welfare program, and there were people who weren't prepared to accept welfare because they were independent. And, you know, they thought that they should be independent. But mincom was seen as something a little bit different. It was interpreted by a lot of people, and a lot of women in particular, were very outspoken about this is, this is, this is just what people need to survive. This is just making sure families have enough. And it's not about it's not about welfare, it's not about receiving charity. This is just about justice. So it was seen very differently, and yet at the same time, I mean, in in practical terms, the money only did go to people who had low incomes. It was income tested. The money only went to people with low incomes, and it gradually petered out. So it disappeared altogether by the time you reached middle incomes. But the promise was there for everybody. And the idea was that, you know, if you know incomes, incomes are unpredictable, particularly in farming communities. And the idea was that, well, the promise is there if you if you run into difficulty, the money's there for you. If you do, well, you don't need the money. And so it was a different sense of sharing that sort of pervaded people's perceptions of income.

Stuart Murray  7:34  
And when you mentioned that during your research, there were a number of outspoken people, women, in particular, outspoken in what way positive, negative, or both positively?

Evelyn Forget  7:44  
Well, there was certainly criticism from small business owners who found that, you know, one of the things that basic income does is it gives people the opportunity to walk away from dangerous jobs, you know, and people found that they had to change the way that they were paying people, and the way that they were hiring people. So there was some criticism, but it was, it was very largely positively received, and often by families, and especially by women. What

Stuart Murray  8:12  
should we call this? Evelyn? Is it guaranteed annual income? Is it a basic leveling what terminology is being used today.

Evelyn Forget  8:21  
At the time, it was called guaranteed annual income. Today, it's more likely to be called a basic income, so

Stuart Murray  8:27  
at that time, I mean, I would wonder for women, if they knew, if they were raising a family, for example, that they may have the opportunity to stay at home longer, if they knew there was an income, versus saying they have to get back into the into the workplace. Is that fair comment?

Evelyn Forget  8:46  
I think it's a fair comment. If you remember, this was done during the 1970s so many of them were not working, or were working only part time. Good point. I should say that when this program was introduced, it was the one research question that researchers had was, if we give people a basic income, will they stop working? Right? And so that's what they were focused on. And just to give you the results up front, no, there was no, there was no significant reduction in the amount people worked. There were two groups of people who did work less. Women worked a little bit less, largely because they stayed home longer with their kids, but they weren't working a whole lot to begin with,

Stuart Murray  9:26  
the hardest job in the world doesn't get a paycheck, and that is raising children,

Evelyn Forget  9:30  
exactly. And it's always a bit of a shock when I talk about this to remind people that in the 1970s we were talking about four weeks of maternity leave. There was parental leave, there was no support. So yeah, a lot of people thought four weeks was a pretty miserly time off with an infant, and the other group of people who worked less. And it's interesting, the language turns out to be important young unattached males. That is young men who don't yet have families and. For people who don't support the idea of a basic income or a guaranteed income, that's a very negative thing, right? That's because it seems to feed into everybody's prejudice. But when you look at the data a little bit more carefully, these young and attached males were largely 15 to 19 years old, and the reason they worked a lot less is because the high school completion rate just soared during the period. And so if you think about a small prairie town in the middle of the 1970s low income families didn't keep their sons in high school to graduate. The kids turned 16, they went out and they got a job. They became supporting when men come came along, a lot of those families decided their sons should stay around and they should graduate from high school. And I always like to ask people just to stop for a minute and think about the difference in life trajectories for a kid who, in 1975 finished grade 12 or didn't finish grade 12, and the different kinds of jobs and opportunities that that young man would have and the different opportunities he'd be able to provide for his own family. Yeah, and Evelyn,

Stuart Murray  11:00  
because you did so much research on this, I guess. Call it an experiment in income, I find it fascinating that it took place here in the 70s in Manitoba. And the conversation, you know, is, as I said at the very outset of this, so so much a part of what we have as our daily language. You know, language, whether it's talking about poverty or homelessness. I mean, there's so many of these issues. So oftentimes people sort of say, Look, you know, as a concept, that's an interesting as a concept, but, you know, I don't know it'll work. Well, it's interesting that there was actually went from concept to to implementation. So you do have some groundwork to look at, and the issues that you raise, I think are extremely important, because those that would oppose it would look at it and say it's welfare on steroids. You know, you're simply you're giving people money. What's the incentive to make them work? And I don't know if this is a fair comparison, Evelyn, and maybe we're doing a small pivot. But please, I'd love your thoughts. You know, when you look at the question and the concern about a guaranteed annual income, maybe taking people out of the workforce, then you look at what this we went through with this pandemic, where there was, you know, all of this Cerb money that was that came forward to to provide people with an income, and it seems to me, Evelyn and disagree if I'm if I'm not right here, because I I'm not sure I am. But my opinion was, once we started to get over COVID, it was so hard to find people, to open restaurants, to find jobs in certain places, they just weren't coming back. Is there any correlation, anything you could draw between those two programs and learn something from

Evelyn Forget  12:47  
it? I think you have to be careful when you look at the Cerb, the whole purpose of the Cerb was to keep people home right, to encourage people not to work, to let them stay home so that the pandemic didn't didn't worsen. And the program was set up in such a way as to create disincentives to work. It was supposed to do that, and it did do that. I think one of the reasons people weren't working is because of the pandemic reality that they were that they were dealing with. And when the pandemic ended and people tried to get back on their feet. The industries that were having the hardest time hiring were in hospitality and restaurants weren't making a lot of money at that point. They weren't guaranteeing wages, they weren't guaranteeing shifts. So if somebody took those jobs, you know, they might get a few hours a week and they might not. And so it was very difficult, I think, for people to walk back into that kind of a job and to and to try to make a go of it. And I think a lot of people were, were very reluctant to start. I don't think you can draw conclusions about a guaranteed income itself from the experience we had during the pandemic. I think that there were some similarities. From my perspective, the biggest similar or the biggest learning experience was that the Cerb worked tremendously well at reducing poverty. Had actually cut the poverty rates in half during that period when Cerb ended, the poverty rates have gone right back up, and now we're in in a worse position than we were immediately before the pandemic. But those rates go so

Stuart Murray  14:22  
I think I know the answer, but I need to hear it from somebody who's studied it. Why did they fall? They fell

Evelyn Forget  14:27  
simply because the money was available to people. You know, you were just giving people money, and just giving people money and giving them the opportunity to spend that money in the ways that they think are important. I think goes a long way towards improving people's learning living conditions. And

Stuart Murray  14:44  
I think you said it so well, and I appreciate explaining the notion that, unlike the the sort of the guaranteed annual income that that you know, was giving people the opportunity to and the concern was, would they stay at work or not? Cerb, as you say, made people stay at home. Home, you were paying people to stay at home. And I guess that, you know, the question is, once that that stopped, then you know this notion of trying to climb the mountain to get back into the workplace. If businesses aren't in a position to pay you a wage to employ you, then there's nobody there to work. And so now, then you have the double whammy, where you now serve is no longer available, and so the poverty level increases dramatically.

Evelyn Forget  15:27  
I think that's exactly right. So

Stuart Murray  15:28  
Evelyn, probably a totally unfair question, but because you're an expert and you study this, if you were advising the Prime Minister of the day, and I don't care what party it is, it doesn't matter. You know, parties come and go. But if you were advising the Prime Minister of the day with the knowledge you had, knowing that, and again, when I say knowing that the pandemic was going to end, I don't know that anybody did until it kind of did, and maybe it still hasn't, you know. So I want to be fair in the question Evelyn, but I want to sort of get your sense. Would you advise the Prime Minister of the day, knowing that you had to create this financial program to basically make people stay at home for health, safety, etc, but knowing that at some juncture there could be a shift. Would you have any advice on some of knowledge that you have to say, here's how I think we may be able to slowly take our way out of Cerb, into looking at what the poverty line is, to make sure that we're addressing that so it doesn't go down further, so that we get into more of a harmonized position where people are actually having a basic living wage without legislating it. Or maybe you do have to. I think

Evelyn Forget  16:36  
if I can answer that in a slightly different way, I think, you know, the Cerb originally was set up in such a way that you had to not work in order to receive it. If you worked at all, you didn't. But as the pandemic sort of began to abate, they did change the way that they set it up so that you were permitted to earn a certain amount of money and still receive a partial Cerb. I think one of the and, and that's sort of what would happen with a guaranteed annual income, or a basic income, the way it was set up in in during income, was that if you had no money from any source, you received the full amount. If you went out and you worked, your benefit would be reduced, but it would be reduced by less than you earned. So it would gradually peter out as your earnings increased, and it would eventually disappear by the time you hit middle incomes. If you set the program up that way, you're always better off if you work working another hour, always better off than not working. And I think if you play with those with those tax they're called Tax backs, back rates. If you play with the design of the experiment, you can actually get some very good results. And we actually have many programs in Canada that are set up that way. If you think of the Canada workers benefit, that very much works the same way, and it's set up in such a way to encourage people to go back to work, and you can do the same thing with the basic income. So Evelyn,

Stuart Murray  18:05  
do you think setting up a program is the way to go, or do you think it needs to have some legislation behind it? Some whatever the program may be, is it would would one have more? I don't want to use the word authority. I guess I'm looking at more from an administrative standpoint, something that would be more acceptable. I'm thinking about the critics that you know, sort of look at a basic income and say, Well, you know, who all you got welfare. You got all sorts of things. I mean, part of it is a lack of understanding of what it's trying to do and what the program means to do. But I'm just wondering if, in your opinion, is, is creating programs? Is the way to go, or is it through legislation?

Evelyn Forget  18:44  
That's a hard question for me to answer. If I were Prime Minister,

Stuart Murray  18:49  
yes, indeed. Okay, on this program, ladies and gentlemen, I have Prime Minister Evelyn Fauci, Prime Minister over to you.

Evelyn Forget  18:55  
If I were Prime Minister, what, what I would do is to work with the provinces. I think the provinces have a tremendous amount of machinery in place that and and they've got a lot of experience delivering income assistance. I think the programs, by and large, are not very good programs, but in some cases, that's simply due to a lack of money on the part of the provinces. So cooperating with the provinces and working in partnership, I think, could go a very long way, but that also has the benefit of allowing different provinces to have slightly different designs. So if you look across the country right now, people are actually experimenting with this idea of basic income. In Quebec, for example, there's a basic income for people with long term disabilities. In Newfoundland, there's a program for people with long term disabilities, and they've just introduced another one for people aged 60 to 65 if we look nationally, we actually have groups of people in Canada who receive a basic income. If you just think of the experience of somebody who's 64 years old and turns. 65 if they're 64 years old, on EIA and Manitoba, they're living on about $10,000 a year. If they get the maximum amount. When they turn 65 their income more than doubles because they get OAS and GIS, which is a kind of guaranteed income. So I think all of these programs together, we have are a lot of disparate programs, and what we need to do is to bring those programs together, to eliminate the gaps between them and to make it work a little bit more consistently for everybody. You know,

Stuart Murray  20:30  
we talked about even income at that time when they looked at it, would you have to change the welfare system to adapt this? Or is it something that, again, you know, some of these questions I'm asking you, I know it's not kind of a yes or no question. I mean, it's a very complex issue, because, you know, we're talking about, you know, making poverty history. I mean, homelessness, all of the health issues that fall into that. So I don't mean to sort of simplify, but I'm just, you know, you obviously have studied this a lot, so, and I love, by the way, when I ask the question, if you say I'd like to answer it in a slightly different way, please continue to do that, because I may not be asking the question the right way. But do you see that, you know, the program of welfare, which is, it's one of those things Evelyn that is so endemic in our society, and to sort of come along and say, Let's try and sort of adjust or change that. You know, I can hear the screaming from the rooftop for not always the right reason. But how might you sort of answer that,

Evelyn Forget  21:31  
I think, for not always the right reasons. I think that one of the things that would happen if we had a reasonably articulated Basic Income program is that the welfare system, the role of the welfare system, would change rather dramatically. So you could imagine, for example, an individual who needs support going to the province the way they do now, to apply for assistance. But instead of, instead of case workers being the gateway and trying, trying to ensure that only deserving people receive income assistance. They become enablers, and part of what they do is to ensure that the individual has completed their tax forms and are that they're on track, essentially, to receive the basic income so they could receive provincial support, and then the province essentially moves them on to onto the Basic Income program. So you can see the two bits working together, I think, to actually improve the improve the possibilities available to individuals. Yeah,

Stuart Murray  22:35  
and I think, you know the issue around, you know, where the enablers are in the system. Now, there's a lot of hoops and barriers to jump over.

Evelyn Forget  22:44  
There certainly are, and I think many people, most of us, have very little experience with the welfare system, with the IA, and we imagine that it's just a matter of, you know, going to the office and completing a form, and you get your money. And it's not, it certainly isn't that there are a great many requirements that are required to receive it. Many people don't realize, for example, that about two thirds of the basic welfare payment is a shelter allowance that you get only if you can produce rent receipts or a signed lease agreement. So if you're staying with friends, if you're couch surfing, you're living on about $300 a month, as opposed to you're fully

Stuart Murray  23:23  
and Evelyn, as you say, there are people that that have to produce these receipts. There's people that it's, I mean, it, it's almost the the administrative part of your life when you're below the poverty line doesn't allow you to actually go to seek employment. But you're producing this receipt, or you're producing this, or you have to go to this meeting. You have to, you know, show all of these things that allow you to then get some cash where you're saying, If I could do away with all of that, I might actually go out and get a job. Absolutely,

Evelyn Forget  23:53  
absolutely. I have a friend who receives disability support, and she makes a little bit of money selling candles and and things like that in their house. You know, about $50 $200 a month, that kind of but the amount of paperwork involved in in accounting for that every month, and seeing the it's, it's, it's actually astonishing. What's required. I should say there was, there was a very short lived attempt in Ontario a few years ago, with the sort of dying days of Kathleen Wynne some premiership, to introduce the basic income experiment. And so people were registered in this experiment from four different parts of Ontario. And as they started to receive the money, they did two things immediately. The first thing most people did was to improve their living situation, so they got better apartments. And the second thing they did was to register in community college. And so there was this huge upsurge. So I saw this increase in Dauphin in the 1970s where, you know. Boys were finishing high school, what we saw just a few years ago was that people were going back to community college to get some job training to get a better job. It's not clear. It didn't last very long, because, of course, there was an election and the program was canceled almost immediately, but it would have been interesting to see what a difference it made in the lives of the people who did attempt to go back and to pick up some skills. It turns out that most people really don't like not working. You know, it's, it's, you know, everybody thinks that this would be a wonderful thing. And when people aren't occupied, it's not very good. It's not very good for their mental health. It's not something enjoy doing. And, you know, people, people want to work, and they usually go out of their way to find ways to occupy their time.

Stuart Murray  25:52  
Evelyn, how did you get involved in all of this incredible research that you've been doing? What? What was the trigger that you said, Wow, I, you know, this is a fascination to me, and I want to learn more about it. My

Evelyn Forget  26:03  
office is at Health Sciences Center. I'm at the University of Manitoba, but I'm in the Faculty of Medicine, and my office is at the Health Sciences Center. And it takes about 20 minutes walking through the whole ways of Health Sciences Center, talking to people in in the clinics talking to practitioners. You know, if you're a health economist, everybody wants the same thing from you. They want to ask you the same question, and that is, you know, how are we going to pay for this? How are we going to pay for the health care system? How are we going to get this new machinery we need? How are we going to pay the docs? But you walk around and you realize very quickly that you're treating the consequences of poverty. The people who are sitting in the clinics, by and large, are not there because they have some, you know, rare infectious disease or some genetic anomaly. They're there because they have lived really, really hard lives. And so the question, and I mean, we know that, we know that from all kinds of data, all kinds of evidence that we have that poverty is so strongly correlated with early deaths and poor health outcomes. But the question is, can we do something about it? Can we do something about people's health? And that's why, that's why I went back to Dauphin the researchers in the 1970s weren't particularly interested in health outcomes, but I wanted to know, you know whether this had any impact on people's well being, whether it had any impact on their health. And I found an eight and a half percent reduction in hospitalization for people who had access to a basic income. And all I can do as an economist is shake my head and say, This is a country that spends about $75 billion a year on hospitals. Eight and a half percent is a tremendous amount of money. And so, yeah, people worry about the cost of the basic income. They worry about the cost of ensuring that everybody is at least at the poverty line, because that's what we're talking about. We're talking about what close to the poverty line, not taking them wealthy, instead of asking them to live on half the poverty line or less. And and, you know, we're spending that money. We're spending all kinds of money treating the consequences of poverty. We're spending money dealing with encampments and parks. We're spending money in our hospitals. We're spending money in our schools trying to get kids caught up because their parents move too often because they can't afford to pay the rent. You

Stuart Murray  28:19  
just said something there that very profound. When you talk about an 8% reduction in the number of, like, just again, 8% was around the the less hospitalization. Yeah. Okay, so What's always interesting? Because you mentioned this again at the beginning, right? You say that a lot of times people say, well, we need this. We need this. And of course, the question is, where do we get the money? You know, it's all about, how are we going to spend the money? But when you start to look at and say, and I think this is one of the challenges in in today's society, with conversations, you say, well, look at, we know where some savings are. Before you can even finish the sentence, people saying, Oh yeah, you're just going to cut programming. You're just going to cut, cut, cut. Say, stop. If you look at from an economist standpoint, which is what you are, and how you've looked at this, you can actually say, here's an investment that will save you a tremendous amount and, and if you want it, I mean, okay, let's, if you want to just talk money as accounts, let's talk money, but that, let's, let's, let's move the money aside and talk about human dignity, about about, you know, the passion to be a human in this world and to sort of live a possible life. That's like, why can we not as as, you know, let's just say we're all adults. Why can we not get there? Evelyn,

Evelyn Forget  29:33  
it's astonishing to me. It's always astonishing to me. I think I don't know, I don't know. I don't know how to answer that question. I'm always taken aback by people who assume there's not a problem, there's not a problem here to address. And I think that we do need to recognize, we do need to recognize the profound consequences of poverty, not only for the people who are living in poverty, but for all of us. For the consequences for the society in which we live.

Stuart Murray  30:02  
But Evelyn, you know, that other element, that kind of, that equation, you know, that sort of talks about this holistic approach, and I wish I had an answer. I just, you know, just frustrated with you that people will only look at the expense as if it's a bad thing. And sometimes, I mean, if it's not handled correctly, yes, I get it, it could be a bad thing. But if that expense finds savings on the other side, which you point out and is and it's factual, it's not kind of a mythical thing, you've got facts to back it up. You would think people would try to embrace that. But I think today, you know, just with how we communicate things, Evelyn, everything is so simplistic. And so, you know, as you say, You hardly finish a sentence before somebody's already jumped to the conclusion, because we're so programmed to think that the minute you talk about savings, it means, you know, wholesale cuts, which means it's going to hurt people more. And I guess I would ask, Where might we start that conversation? Evelyn, where, like in your world, you know you you speak a lot, and I know that one of the things that is your in your background is, do you get asked to speak a lot at international organizations to advise on poverty, inequity, health and social outcomes when you speak to them, do you find that you've got an audience that has started to solely come to understanding where it is, or do you see this as you know, I'm another speaker here, and they've asked me to speak because the guess what, the theme of this conference is, how do we reduce poverty? Well, there

Evelyn Forget  31:36  
are certainly receptive audiences and less receptive audiences, but you know, in a sense, nobody ever questions investing in physicians, hiring more dogs. Nobody ever questions putting more money into hip and knee replacements, or, you know, building building new clinics. And you know, we're prepared to put tremendous amounts of money into the healthcare system because we know that it improves people's lives, but we're not prepared to invest in individuals. We're not prepared to give families the resources they need to live healthy lives, so maybe they'll need a little bit less. And you know, to my mind, it keeps coming back to this old, old distinction that people like to draw between the deserving and the undeserving poor. And there are way too many of us, I think, who want to point to people and say, you know, the circumstances he finds himself in, or circumstances he created himself, his problem, not mine. And I mean, I don't know how to address that. I don't know how to address that notion that we all have a right to live reasonable and reasonably dignified lives.

Stuart Murray  32:44  
I respect the way you're coming at this, because I honestly think you do know how. I really believe that with your background and your expertise, I believe you do know how the question is, can you get the right audience to participate and understand and and sort of move that forward, because, you know, I do this podcast on human rights, and there's so many big signs about we're all born equal, and we're all, you know, entitled to the same, and we're all this, and we're all that, and, you know, and it's fantastic, you know that that's out there. But let's step back for a minute and just sort of examine, is it? Are those things true? I mean, you know, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Are we living that? Or are we just saying, Well, it's a great document, and we've somehow adopted it. Now onto the next subject. So I think it's fantastic, Evelyn, that people like you are thoughtful, that are intelligent, that you're not sort of, you know, kind of pounding the table and saying, you know, wake up people. I mean, maybe you should, by the way, maybe that's another you should try that. I don't know. Maybe you do, but, but I but part of it is when you look at something and you say, I'm not coming at this from some way out in left field where I've just sort of, you know, kind of discovered you you've got research, you've got facts on your side, and you've got the ability to create a conversation that, at the end of the day, provides better dignity, at not more cost, to more people. Let me know when you're going to run for Prime Minister, I'll come and work for

Evelyn Forget  34:21  
you. It sounds great. And one of the limits we face are the short terms of parliamentarians, the short terms of premiers, the short terms of Prime Ministers. And everybody is focused, constantly focused on, on the next election, a constant campaign. But we're reaching. We're very rapidly reaching a stage where we don't have a choice. I think that we are moving. I mean, I you know, I might I sound very frustrated today, but I think we are inevitably, inexorably moving towards a basic income. I do believe that we will have a basic income in Canada. I think it's inevitable. I think it's coming. It's coming because we won't have a choice in the matter. I. Um, the changes in the labor market that have occurred over the last 30 and 40 years and are are increasing. Are are setting the world up in such a way that we need a basic income. It's the only way to address, to address these things we're seeing consequences in our society.

Stuart Murray  35:18  
So I want you to come back and talk about those consequences. But I want to just sort of share with you, sort of one of my my kind of personal experience. I was involved in a business, and what we did is, you know, we were an entry level business, and so we offered up a minimum wage when people sort of started to come, but you find after a while, when the workforce starts to become less and less, a minimum wage doesn't make it you've got to pay more than a minimum wage. And I remember conversations about people saying, you know, we need to have legislation about around a minimum wage. And, you know, I took the approach at that point to say, No, I think what is, the market is going to determine there is no minimum wage. You could have a minimum wage if nobody's giving you applications to to to come to work in your workplace, you're going to have to up how much you're paying the hourly wage. And so therefore the market will decide that, what's your response to that? Well,

Evelyn Forget  36:14  
I think I agree with you. Okay, you know, one of the one of the things we hear very often, are complaints from small business that they simply can't they can't find a workforce. They can't find a workforce. Well, there is an easy solution to that, right? We teach it in a first year economics class. We know what we do if you can't find a workforce at the minimum wage, offer more money and see what happens. And I mean, of course, there are different interests. Of course there are people who would like to be able to hire workers at the lowest possible wage. That's not necessarily a good thing. It's not necessarily a good thing for anybody. It's not possible for people to survive. It's not possible for people to live on those wages. And, you know, a basic income is, I think, a way of supplementing people who are working at low wage jobs. It's a way of allowing them to gain experience and to to improve the situation they find themselves in. It's not a permanent solution. It's a it's a way forward. It's a way it's a step up.

Stuart Murray  37:14  
So you mentioned you thought that from your perspective, we may be getting to a basic annual income. What are the reasons that you believe that that's going to be there? What are some of the concerns that you feel are starting to get people's attention that will start to make that happen?

Evelyn Forget  37:28  
Well, I think that there's been an inevitable change in the in the kinds of jobs that are available to people. And certainly, if you look at young people, when I graduated from university, the question was, which permanent job would I take? It wasn't, you know, can I find a permanent job when students graduate with a first degree? Now, most of them are on temporary contracts. Very few of them move into permanent jobs that they expect to keep forever. So that kind of workforce, and we also see the proliferation of firms like Uber Eats, the delivery services, the sort of short term, just make work jobs. These aren't jobs that people can build lives around, that people can survive with. The economy seems to be moving in that direction, but it isn't a comfortable economy. I think a lot of people have been able to ignore that for a long time, because many of us have been able to escape it. But all we have to do is look at things like AI, you know, and realize how many of our jobs could go very, very quickly with the with the kinds of the kinds of technological changes that are are coming into play. I'm not the sort of person who believes that technological change will kill jobs. Every time there's technological change, it creates more job but the people moving from job to job isn't an easy thing. I mean, the people who are who are trained for this particular economy we're living in aren't going to easily move to higher skilled jobs or different kinds of jobs. So I think it's inevitable. We've got this, this huge social disruption coming in, in the nature of the labor market, and I think we need to find a way to allow people to sort of gracefully move forward with their lives.

Stuart Murray  39:17  
It's interesting how this is all going to sort of unfold. And my challenge with the conversation is, how do we bring Evelyn, people who are marginalized, who are racialized, from different groups? Because it's not a generic. You can say, you know, we all kind of fit into this, into this equation. There's, there's a lot of elements that go to, I mean, people with disability marginalized. I said that at the at the outset, I love the comment when somebody was talking about kind of coming out of COVID, and there's lots of anxiety, and there still is today, and we there's a lot of hangover, where somebody was just using the comment and said, You know what, be kind. You just be kind. You know, like. That's all we're saying. Just Be kind. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to others. How do we instill something that is so fundamental that, you know, those of us that are have, have been blessed to be parents and have children, and then some of us are have grandchildren. I mean, that's all you really want them to do, is be kind. I mean, this is not what the podcast is about. But how do you feel about that? No,

Evelyn Forget  40:23  
I I share that concern. I really do. Every time I see a letter to the editor in the newspaper, there were two in the globe this morning, letters to the editor. I don't know if you, if you noticed recently, there were a couple of case studies of people with scurvy in Canada and two letters to the editor in the globe this morning suggesting that this is just a matter of education. It's not a matter of it's not a matter of economic ability. Anybody, anybody can buy a big jug of orange juice and keep it in their fridge and solve the problem. And I'm thinking about all of the people I talk to who live in a room or who live in a, you know, a long stay hotel on Main Street without a fridge, without a bathroom, without any of the cooking facilities we deal with. We are so ignorant, I think of the lives of people who are different from us. You know, we've, we've increasingly become encapsulated in these little bubbles where, you know, we look around at everybody we know, and it's easy for all of us to imagine that somehow we're not keeping up. We're the we're the person who's who's really being short changed in this scale, without recognizing that many of us are in a very comfortable position, and there are a whole lot of people struggling with us. Yeah,

Stuart Murray  41:38  
I've had conversations with others, and got to meet some really incredible people around the whole issue around homeless or unsheltered, as the as people sort of use that, that terminology and the comments. You know, in the middle of winter, you drive down Portage Avenue and there's people in bus shelters. And, you know, a lot of people want to sort of look away from the bus shelter. They don't, they don't want to see it. And you know, to some extent, you know, I understand that, but what you're looking away from is not the fact that these people, I mean, do they choose to live in a bus shelter? I highly doubt it. And so in every day, as those of us that are fortunate to go from A to B, and A is your home and b is your workplace. As you're traveling by, you see these things. And so is there an impetus to sort of say it's wrong? Well,

Evelyn Forget  42:30  
if I'm being kind, I would say it's just a little bit of whistling past the graveyard. People are just a little bit afraid. They're just a little bit afraid. And I think we face those fears on ourselves and recognize that we all need a little bit of help here. Yeah, no,

Stuart Murray  42:44  
for sure. Have you been to conferences lately? Have you been speaking on this subject matter lately? Just be interested to see what what has been occupying your time so over the past number of months, have you been out to some conferences to talk about this issue? I have been,

Evelyn Forget  43:00  
you know, but I think that there's still a fair amount of interest, probably not the groundswell of interest there was during the pandemic and the early parts of the pandemic, but I think there's still a strong recognition that, you know, the world's changing, and we need to, we need to figure out how to change with it, how to change the programs to make it possible for people to live reasonable lives.

Stuart Murray  43:22  
I noticed on your bio that you are a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Yeah, just explain. What is that? Well,

Evelyn Forget  43:33  
it's just an academic organization that recognizes people in all different fields.

Stuart Murray  43:37  
And modesty comes along with that Evelyn, I think. But the other one is, of course, you're an Officer of the Order of Canada. Congratulations on that. Did you get that award because of the work that you're doing in this field? Yes, I did. Yeah. Well deserved. And congratulations on that. One of the things I mean, at the outset, you sort of talked about, you know, the importance of, you know, what is happening today? What does poverty look like in Manitoba? You've talked about that. You've talked about men come some history. There some, some amazing things that you've shared with us. One of the things I guess I would ask you is, you have, if I'm not mistaken, have you written a book about this? I have, yeah, a couple of books just, and I'll put that into the Episode notes. But what are the books and and just talk a little bit about them.

Evelyn Forget  44:18  
Well, basic income for Canadians. There were two editions. The most recent one is basic income for Canadians, from the COVID 19 emergency to financial security for all, published by Laura. And the second one, co authored with student of mine, called Radical trust. And radical trust just tells some stories about people in different circumstances, largely, but not entirely, in Manitoba and Winnipeg. So we talked to people with disabilities. We talked to kids who've aged out of the child welfare system. You know, we've talked to all kinds of people, and they talk about what a difference of basic. Income would make in their lives and some of the difficulties that they

Stuart Murray  45:03  
faced. So those would be, I mean, available at McNally Robinson or bookstores, etc. They

Evelyn Forget  45:09  
you might have to get them ordered. Yeah, no, no. Fair enough, but, but I'm just

Stuart Murray  45:13  
saying, you know, like a lot of times, you may write a book that's specifically for an academic library, I mean, but that's not the case. I mean, this is, this is general knowledge, right? I mean, it's in the sense, yeah,

Evelyn Forget  45:24  
these are public knowledge books, and they're both available. They're both available in the public library system in Winnipeg. Oh, okay,

Stuart Murray  45:30  
even, even better. So, so that's fantastic. Thank you so much for finding some time. This is a very, very deep, deep conversation that needs a lot of people to pay attention to you've brought forward some incredible ideas, and you know, thank you for sharing them, and I and thank you for your time. If somebody was listening to this, this podcast, Evelyn and said, How can I get involved? How can I be somebody that can make a difference? What would you advise them to do?

Evelyn Forget  45:56  
Basic Income Canada network? You can just Google Basic Income Canada network has a number of links. There are organizations in every province in Canada, I believe, working to create a basic income, to further the idea of a basic income. So in Manitoba, we have basic income Manitoba. And again, you can Google that and find us attached to the Social Planning Council. But these organizations exist across the country and around the world, in fact, and you'll find a lot of links to publications, to newsletters, to things that you can follow up. So

Stuart Murray  46:33  
lots of information that is available. And then the next thing, of course, I think, is, how do we take the information into action and sort of start moving forward,

Evelyn Forget  46:41  
just have conversations with everybody into Yeah, I love it. And,

Stuart Murray  46:45  
you know, as we get into kind of that, whatever we call holiday season, lots of opportunities to have conversations,

Evelyn Forget  46:51  
yeah. Robert Green needs to talk about kindness. I love that.

Stuart Murray  46:55  
Yeah, for sure, yeah. I think it's a it's a great way to end it. So. So Evelyn, thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts, your expertise, your research, kind of your vision around this it's, it's, it's been really wonderful for me, and I know for people that will be listening, they'll feel the same. So thank you so much for for taking the time to talk to me on humans on rights. Thanks

Matt Cundill  47:15  
very much. Thanks for listening to humans on rights. A transcript of this episode is available by clicking the link in the show notes of this episode. Humans on rights is recorded and hosted by Stuart Murray, social media marketing by Buffy Davie, music by Doug Edmond. For more, go to Human Rights hub.ca