Universal Basic Income is Coming - What you need to know
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Summary
What would you do if you could live on a guaranteed basic income? What would you name it? Senator Kim Pate has a bill that would provide a guaranteed livable basic income in Canada, and it s getting a second reading in the Senate.
Transcript
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Hi, it's John, and welcome to the channel, a channel where I dare to be different.
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It's 4.26 a.m. Sunday, November the 9th, I tip my big blue mug of coffee to you today.
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Thank you so much for being here. I'm this close to 40,000, so if you haven't subscribed,
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I'll put my mug up and say just click on subscribe. Now, if you hit the mug right now,
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it won't subscribe you, hit the button below. So I dare to be different here on this channel.
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And this topic might have a few of you turned off, but I want you to have an open mind here.
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In fact, I'm going to go back, dare I say it, 20 years to my old job working in Cornwall, Ontario.
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My program was called John Bolton's Cornwall Today. You say it's a small market radio station. It was
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a small market radio station with a big show. I get to talk to so many people. I spoke with
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Stephen Harper and Dalton McGinty and Elizabeth May and Justin Trudeau and politician after
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politician. And the topic that I'm going to discuss today that you're going to be really
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pissed off about, I discussed this with the Canadian Senator about 20 years ago, a conservative
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Canadian Senator, by the way, who passed away just a couple of years ago. We'll get to that in just a
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moment, a short interview I did with him of about six, six to seven minutes. So what am I talking
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about today? I'll get to that in a moment, but I have a question for you. When I say the words
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universal basic income, what's the first thing that comes to mind for you? It'll probably be one of two
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different things. The first thing might be no effing way. The other thing would probably be something
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like, there's no damn way. I want to go to work every day and slave away at my job to pay taxes so
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somebody can sit at home and get paid to do absolutely nothing. And I agree with you. I agree
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with you 100% on that. But what if that program actually saved Canadian taxpayers money? Would you
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have an open mind to that? For instance, if you were to implement universal basic income
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and not allow people to sit at home and do nothing and collect money, and it actually cut down on the
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cost of other social programs, say welfare, would you be in favor of that? Have an open mind here.
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Okay. So why am I talking about this today? Because I woke up shortly after one o'clock this morning,
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I opened up X and I saw this tweet. Now Sherry DeNovo, don't much like Sherry DeNovo, but this is what
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she tweeted out this morning. And I haven't seen much on this online. People have been talking about
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the budget all week. After over 70 years of folk advocating for a guaranteed livable income,
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my dad was working on this in the 1950s. It's finally moving ahead. Second reading and on to the
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Senate. Thank you, Leah Gazan. Now I think Leah Gazan's that other nutcase who wants to throw you
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in jail for residential school denialism or something. But anyway, thank you for your work. This single move
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would allow the poorest to eat and have a place to live. And this is from UBI Works, breaking Canadian
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Senate Bill S-206. That's what it's called for a guaranteed livable basic income. And that's what
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they call it, not a universal basic income. Past second reading and will be sent to committee.
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News release. Senate committee to study guaranteed livable basic income. Senator Kim Pate.
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No doubt some of you right now are really pissed off if you're still here. Okay. And I understand where
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you're coming from. Those first two things we talked about. No effing way. And I don't want my
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tax dollars going to somebody sitting around doing nothing. I understand where you're coming from. I
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feel the same way. And I felt the same way when I did an interview on this 20 years ago.
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But again, what if this were to help? Have an open mind here. So Senator Kim Pate is the one
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who spoke back in June about this issue in the Senate. She spoke for 39 minutes. And I watched the whole
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thing this morning. So you don't have to. And here's just a short little clip of a couple of
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minutes. It doesn't explain the whole thing, but it might give you a little better idea of what's
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going on here and how far along this bill has moved through the government.
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This legislation does not prescribe a particular design or model. This would be for governments as
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well as experts and communities to determine. This approach reflects how crucial it is to get design
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questions right. The bill does, however, establish a few essential parameters to guide development
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informed by decades of research, expertise, evidence, and lived experience. First, guaranteed
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livable basic income must be universally accessible to people in need. Everyone whose income is below
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or dips below a certain threshold can access these cash transfers. As a person's income from other
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sources increases, for example, through a new job, the amount of income received would gradually decrease.
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Second, the income must be livable. It must provide an amount sufficient to afford essentials and permit
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people to rebound out of poverty wherever they live, including in remote communities on reserve and in the north.
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Current social assistance schemes do not provide enough to live on. Indeed, 98% of people receiving social assistance are
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unable to escape poverty and 71% are in deep poverty. This minimum subsistence means that people are trapped
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at the margins, making impossible and unacceptable choices, for example, between food, medicine, or shelter.
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A third and related requirement under Bill 206 is that guaranteed livable basic income must be unconditional.
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Unlike current social assistance programs, people would not have to meet requirements that are too often unrealistic
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and ill-adapted to the realities of those living in poverty, that open every aspect of their lives to scrutiny
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and then place them at constant risk of losing what little benefits they are provided. These policies are dehumanizing,
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they are financially costly, testing people's eligibility and policing their behavior takes mountains of
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administrative resources and results in worse, not better outcomes.
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Fourth and finally, Bill 206 reinforces that guaranteed livable basic income must be one strand in a strong social safety net.
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While some less generous forms of income support like provincial and territorial social assistance might no longer be needed,
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guaranteed livable income would not necessarily replace programs and supports linked to specific needs,
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for example, for Indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, those retiring or losing jobs.
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The program must not and would not leave people with low incomes worse off.
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As the Senator says at the beginning of that clip, there's no real model for this so there's no real plan on how it would be rolled out
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and you need to stay vigilant because you don't want to have to pay your money for somebody to sit at home and do nothing
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and you want to make sure that this is going to save money and not cost more.
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And this has been pretty much ignored over the last couple of days that I can see as everybody focuses on the budget
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and votes of confidence in the budget and what's going on in the House of Commons.
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This is a big deal. Now, I would say to the Senator, if she ever happens to see this, you need to end the DEIBS
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because if you watch her full video, she talks identity politics.
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She talks about racialized people who are poor, Indigenous people who are poor, women who are poor.
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And I would suggest to you, Senator, that a majority of the people in the country who are poor are probably white
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because there's more white people in the country. Stop talking about people when it comes through their identities,
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whether it's racial or gender, and just talk about people, Canadians.
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I think your message wouldn't be lost on a lot of people. And don't do land acknowledgements
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because you do that right at the beginning and the people that you want to try to convince this is a good idea are gone.
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They don't even want to listen to you anymore. So that's just a bit of advice for you.
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I want to take you back to Senator Hugh Siegel.
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Now, Hugh Siegel was a politician. He was a senator.
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And here he is right here. He passed away in 2023.
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He was a Canadian political strategist, author, commentator, academic, and senator.
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He served as chief of staff to Ontario Premier Bill Davis and later to Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
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And I had a chance to talk to him on my program, John Bolton's Cornwall Today, going back, I would say, probably 20 years.
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And I had the same problem with this as you're having right now.
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I thought about this first thing this morning when I saw that tweet from Sherry DeNovo.
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And at the end of what you're hearing, if you go through the whole thing, I hope you'll do that.
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Tell me what you think of Hugh Siegel and his argument for, at the time, what he called universal basic income,
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which is now called guaranteed livable basic income.
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And Senator Siegel joins us on Cornwall Today. Good to have you here, sir.
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Okay, maybe what I can do right off the top is say that you're a conservative.
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You're sort of a lone wolf when it comes to this type of an idea, I would think, for a guaranteed annual income.
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But can you explain in a nutshell what you're proposing here?
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Yeah, well, it's actually nothing all that radical.
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We have a guaranteed annual income supplement now for seniors where if you earn beneath a certain amount from all your various sources,
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if you're 65 or over and you fill out your tax form, you get automatically topped up.
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That started when Mr. Davis was the premier of Ontario.
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That's when that program was brought in for people here in Ontario.
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And then it spread to the other provinces and now it's a federal program as well.
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So that system doesn't involve any more bureaucrats.
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It doesn't involve any more kind of, you know, welfare officers to interview people,
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which our present welfare system does require, which is quite expensive.
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It simply says if you're earning beneath what we know is necessary in Cornwall or Kingston to kind of deal with the basics,
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food, lodging, heat, et cetera, you'll get topped up so you do have enough.
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And that's basically what I'm suggesting is a better way than the amount we're now spending.
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We spend about $140 billion a year federally and provincially on transfers to people now,
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and that does not include any expenditures relating to health or education.
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I think this new approach would be more efficient.
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It wouldn't require all the bureaucrats that we now have for Ontario Works and others.
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You know, the rule book for an Ontario Works caseworker dealing with clients has 800 rules in it as we speak, John.
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That's pretty tough for even the best public servant to administer.
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As you know, if you're a welfare recipient and the vast majority of people living beneath the poverty line are single moms,
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if they find a job and earn more than welfare allows, of course, they lose all their benefits.
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So the net result is to almost claw back 100% of that which they're trying to earn, which makes no sense at all.
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It goes against my conservative principles, which is people should be encouraged to work.
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Well, let me just jump in right now and ask you this.
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If people aren't working at all, would you top them up to that minimum that you were talking about?
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You're saying people who aren't making a specific amount, we'd top them up.
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Or if people weren't working at all, would you give them this annual income regardless, right?
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I mean, we know that a lot of the people who are not working now are disabled.
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We know that a lot of the people who are not working now are people who are under the age of 25 and are trying to stay in school.
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At the present time, if you're a welfare recipient in Ontario and you apply and get accepted to St. Lawrence College
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and then you apply for an Ontario student financial assistance, you're taking off welfare right away
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and we all know that actually getting an education is the best way to guarantee one's own ability to earn one's own way over time.
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And it's the best way to make a real contribution to our economy.
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Part of our problem now is taxpayers is if you look at the prisons, you will see that over 90% of the people in prisons
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come from the 10% of our population who have the lowest incomes who are living beneath the poverty line.
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We know that people who are poor and live beneath the poverty line are the first to get sick.
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These are the costs that are really a huge burden now on every taxpayer, those people,
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So the issue is how do you reduce those costs responsibly?
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How do you encourage people to do something by making it easier for them to do nothing?
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And I'm wondering if you're giving up on people because we're talking about poverty reduction here.
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And the best way to reduce poverty is to get an education and get a job.
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So don't you want to find out what the problem is, why people are poor,
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get them the help they need so they can work in society as opposed to having other people top up their income?
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Well, we don't do that for our senior citizens.
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Well, seniors aren't working though. We're talking about...
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Well, we did that because we made a decision that we did not want our seniors to live beneath the poverty line.
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Your question implies that it's okay for all kinds of people, young mothers and others,
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the disabled, to live beneath the poverty line.
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And I guess, John, you and I respectfully disagree on that.
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I think the most constructive way you can invest is to get people out of poverty.
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And I think, by the way, if you did that, you'd want to make sure that there was a real incentive,
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i.e., the first $4,000 or $5,000 a year that they earned after they're being topped off would not be taxed.
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And you wouldn't top them up at a level where they would be earning as much by being topped off as by working.
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They would probably top them up to a level which deals with the very basic requirements in a way that would probably be a bit more generous than the present welfare,
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but not really enough to live with any measure of comfort.
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You know, of course, that in Canada today, except in Newfoundland and Labrador,
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every welfare recipient gets between $11,000 to $19,000 for a family of four less than what the poverty line is.
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The only place in Canada where they've had, and I point out it's a progressive conservative government that did that,
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the decency to bring everybody up to the low-income cutoff is Newfoundland and Labrador.
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But right across the country, existing levels of welfare do not bring people up to what they basically need to get by.
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And, of course, that contributes to some of the crime and other related problems that we see.
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You know, some parts of the country it's prostitution, some parts of the country it's drugs,
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and that's the sort of thing that costs us huge amounts of money.
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So, no, I don't want to give people money for doing nothing, but I want to give them a hand up,
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and we should do it in a way that doesn't involve more bureaucracy, that doesn't involve more civil service,
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that doesn't involve more administrative costs, but is automatic through the tax system,
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which is what we now do justifiably for our seniors.
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You have great faith in people, and I think maybe we differ a little bit there,
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because I think some people would take advantage of this if they could.
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I mean, I know people in this community who take advantage of our welfare system.
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You know we have a lot of fraud involved in that.
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Are you not concerned that this might be taken advantage of, and that we would be deeper in a hole at the end?
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You know that when you fill out your federal tax form, which is how I would do this,
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and you sign that signature line on the bottom of the page,
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if there's a fraudulent declaration, that is a far more serious crime than gaming your welfare officer.
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So my point is, because the federal tax system protects privacy,
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because the penalties for a false declaration are very high,
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that is a much better way to clean up the system than have the present circumstance
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where the vast majority of our income support workers in the welfare system have a caseload way higher than they can manage,
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which just makes it easier for that system to be gained.
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Who determines how much, and how do you stop government spending from spiraling out of control,
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Well, in the recent report that was done by Senator Eggleton, myself,
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and the Standing Committee on Social and Economic Affairs at the Senate,
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we made the case we don't want to spend one penny more than is now being spent.
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We want to spend the existing amount more efficiently to get better results at lower cost.
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If people who were applying for this were topped up, they would no longer be eligible for welfare.
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That would reduce the welfare burdens in most of our provinces,
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and that is money that could go into tax cuts, could go into paying down the deficit,
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could go into early childhood education, things that we all know are important.
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But now, with the present welfare burdens, you're not going to get there.
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This would reduce the welfare burden, and the federal government, through the tax system,
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And, of course, they could reduce transfers to the provinces for welfare over time.
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And net-net, this would be far more efficient and far more effective for the taxpayer.
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Senator, it's a great discussion. I really appreciate you chatting with us about this.
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John, it's great to hear your voice, and thank you for giving me the chance.
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Well, thank you very, very much. It was nice speaking with you.
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Senator Hugh Siegel on AM 1220 and Cornwall Today.
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For those of you who are still here and may have listened to that whole interview I did with Senator Hugh Siegel about 20 years ago on my radio program,
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it's hard to believe it's been 20 years. It really is.
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And it's funny because I interviewed thousands of people.
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I don't remember most of them, but I always remember that one because this issue pops up every once in a while like it is right now.
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Because it's the same argument that people pushing Bill S-206 right now, including Senator Kim Pate,
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in her 39-minute speech in the Senate back in June, it's the same thing they're saying today.
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And as a conservative, keep an open mind here, you may be throwing crap at your screen right now.
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But if this actually saved some money, helped people, ensured that they continued working while they were getting a bit of a hand up here,
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and it didn't disincentivize work, that's an easier way of saying you're not paying your money to allow somebody to sit at home and collect a paycheck for doing nothing.
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If it could do those things, would you be in favor of something like this, which they call the Guaranteed Livable Basic Income?
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Well, they haven't completely formed this plan yet, and you need to keep your eye on this one, folks, because it could move real fast.
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And the way we're making people poor in this country, meaning the Liberal Party, the way the cost of living is,
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a lot more people might be needing this in the future.
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I thought it might be interesting, and I didn't want to spend my whole morning rage-farming against the Liberal Party.
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