Basic Income and solving the polycrisis

The Basic Income Canada Network (BICN) is hosting the 2026 Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) Congress at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) from August 19 to 22. This year’s list of impressive presenters will address the theme, Basic Income & the Polycrisis: The key to unlocking the puzzle.

Sheila Regehr, Chair of BICN told rabble.ca:

“While ‘polycrisis’ might not yet be a common word, people around the globe know it well because we all live it daily in many ways — the impacts of AI and social media, floods, drought, fires, health problems, insecure jobs, inflation, racism, steep inequality, war and other interconnected crises that can’t be solved in siloes, or one puzzle piece at a time. It’s a dangerous direction for people and planet.

Basic Income is a key to averting that dystopian future. It is a common denominator solution, a foundation of economic democracy where we all — humans, not corporations or robots — use our income every day to vote on how we spend our money and time on what makes us healthy, gives meaning to our lives, and helps us solve problems together. The BIEN Congress is a gathering of people working for that better future.”

Universal Basic Income no longer a radical idea

The congress, celebrating BIEN’s 40th anniversary, has attracted world leaders on Basic Income including Guy Standing and Philippe Van Parijs. Standing, a British economist and co-founder of BIEN, argues a Universal Basic Income is social justice in action and that fundamentally, it’s a social dividend rather than charity.

Belgian philosopher and political economist, Van Parijs, co-authored Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy with Yannick Vanderborght. In their book, Van Parijs and Vanderborght present the most acute and fullest defense of what is no longer considered a radical idea. They argue a Basic Income is the most realistic hope there is for addressing economic insecurity and social exclusion by offering actual financial freedom while simultaneously ensuring social justice that safeguards individual agency over life choices.

Canadian content highlighted at BIEN Congress

BIEN is hosting a pre-congress day on August 19 centred on Canada, with a particular focus on the people on the ground researching, analyzing, developing and running programs and pilots; being part of pilots and programs; learning and promoting knowledge transfer; writing books; making films and organizing.

One of those people is Professor Kendal David whose expertise includes income security and disability policy in Canada. She is skilled at translating complex policy research into audience friendly formats including policy reports, briefing notes, podcasts, zines and op-eds.

David is a co-founder of the Basic Income Youth Collective (BIYC), a grassroots advocacy organization that mobilizes young people around progressive income security policies.

ODSP institutional and boarding allowances invisible in poverty research

David’s report, ODSP Beyond the Basics: Institutional and Boarding Allowances, specifically focussed on the 62,000 Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) recipients living in institutions and boarding houses.

That segment of the population remains almost entirely invisible in both provincial and Canadian poverty research; are excluded from major surveys like the Canadian Survey on Disability; and as a result, are absent from policy impact modeling.

While ODSP recipients get $1,400 per month to cover rent and living expenses, David found the approximately 14,000 institutionalized ODSP recipients receive Personal Needs Allowances (PNAs) of just $149 per month, while 48,000 boarders get Special Boarder Allowances (SBAs) of only $71 per month.

These payments are intended to cover all personal necessities beyond food and shelter, including clothing, computers, WI-FI, phones, transportation, menstrual products and over the counter pharmaceuticals. However, unlike standard ODSP rates, institutional and boarding allowances are not indexed to inflation.

It’s also important to address the fact that most of these institutions and boarding houses are owned and run by private corporations that need to make a profit. That profit motive profoundly impacts the care, nutrition and activities residents receive, as well as staffing assignments and wages.

Inaccessible CDB announced in July 2025

In a vain attempt to remedy this provincially imposed social murder, the federal government introduced the Canada Disability Benefit (CDB) in July 2025. CDB was meant to be a “top up” for folks living on ODSP. Depending on a variety of parameters, the average “top up” is $200 per month.

Although it’s blatantly clear that the federal “top up” doesn’t even come close to helping folks living on ODSP, eligibility for the CDB is tied to the Disability Tax Credit (DTC), which many people with disabilities can’t access due to cost, complexity and administrative barriers. The bottom line is that many folks on ODSP either can’t apply or didn’t qualify for the federal “top up.” Those who do qualify but live in Alberta have their CDB clawed back by the Danielle Smith government.

Upcoming 2026 BIEN Congress panels

David will be part of two important panels: Disrupting deservingness: A conversation on basic income requirements for marginalized and criminalized communities, and From academic silos to public imagination: Creative approaches for sharing basic income research.

“My experience is that the conversations that are happening about Basic Income in other countries can be really, really, different from what we’re talking about here. Canada’s movement is really unique and so, an international conference like this gives us such a great opportunity to share ideas and reflect on what we’re doing here and how we might want to change or approach it differently, but also what makes it really special and unique,” David told rabble.ca.

The congress is a wonderful opportunity to hear from advocates and researchers, gain insight into what is happening in other countries and see how Basic Income is progressing worldwide.

Universal Basic Income a bold nation-building project

“Mark Carney is right that Canada needs bold nation-building projects. But alongside pipelines and ports and hard infrastructure, we should also be talking about social infrastructure. A Basic Income is nation-building too. It creates the stability people need to care for family, pursue education, contribute to their communities, and weather economic change with dignity rather than fear,” Tom Cooper, co-facilitator of Ontario Basic Income Network (OBIN) and Director of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction, told rabble.ca.

Canada should be proud of its accomplishments when it comes to designing, implementing and evaluating both of its Basic Income pilots. The Mincome experiment (1974 – 1979) was the inaugural Canadian Basic Income pilot designed and implemented by Ron Hikel in Dauphin, MN . That pilot documented the fact that folks receiving a Basic Income not only continued working, but improved their education and employment trajectories.

Initiated under Ed Schreyer’s NDP provincial government, over 18,000 boxes of data were put directly into storage by the incoming Progressive Conservative government of Sterling Lyon, who cut the program short and did not want the data analysed.

Roughly 30 years later, Dr. Evelyn Forget discovered the boxes and began analysing the data accumulated under Hikel to prove that the social determinants of health improved and folks kept working. The two exceptions to the folks who kept working were, as the Conservatives described them, “young men and women.”

It turns out the young men were high school aged boys who stayed in school and often went on to complete college or university, rather than quitting school to help support their families. The women who temporarily stopped working were post-partum women who stayed home with their babies during a time when there was absolutely no maternity leave.

Hikel, who was in charge of the Manitoba welfare system while running the Mincome experiment, said, “The psychological approach to welfare, to this day, is fundamentally demeaning because it assumes there is something wrong with you if you are unable to provide sufficient income. However, the reality is that there is an incredibly complex number of factors that make the inadequacy of a family’s income insufficient.”

BIEN Congress opens doors for Canada

The Ontario Basic Income Pilot (April 2017 to March 2019), that the Ford government cut short after running on election promises to the contrary, proved unequivocally that the social determinants of health for individuals and families improved.

Despite Canadian research overwhelmingly supporting the implementation of a Universal Basic Income, 52 years later, Canada has no program in place.

The BIEN Congress is an important opportunity for Canada to share its wealth of knowledge while simultaneously benefiting from the quantitative and qualitative data countries including Finland, Iran, Namibia, India, Kenya and various cities throughout the United States and Europe have gathered from their Basic Income initiatives.

It is time to make the most of our accumulated knowledge and time for Canada to put Canadians and Canadian families on the agendas and spreadsheets of federal and provincial governments well ahead of repetitive and unending corporate bailouts.

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