News

Universal basic income: Could it happen in Canada? – CTV News

Published

9 months ago

February 16, 2024

Advocates say a universal basic income program could make a difference in helping people struggling in precarious and low-income jobs.

But some wonder if it will effectively tackle the problem of poverty and if Canada could even afford a program.

The concept is controversial, though the program has recently gained attention in a few provinces. Newfoundland and Labrador announced in November 2023 a three-year program for residents aged 60 to 64, which will provide the equivalent of the federal seniors’ benefits, The Canadian Press reported.

“The social determinants of health have a far greater impact on well-being than the health-care system itself,” said Newfoundland Premier Andrew Furey, an orthopedic surgeon. “I’m proud to say that as a government, we are placing a heightened focus on the social determinants of health, both in our spending and our policy directives.”

A report in November revealed details of a possible five-year guaranteed basic income program, which would provide income that’s 85 per cent of the government-determined official poverty line in Prince Edward Island.

As well, the Senate is studying Bill S-233, which was introduced by Sen. Kim Pate in 2021, to create a national framework for a guaranteed livable basic income.

If passed, the bill would require the minister of finance to develop a national framework to provide everyone over the age of 17 in Canada, including temporary workers, permanent residents and refugee claimants, with access to a guaranteed livable basic income.

Pate said the Canada Emergency Response Benefit for workers directly affected by COVID-19 shows the country has the infrastructure and ability to design programs quickly in response to economic need.

“We can afford guaranteed livable income, but what we cannot afford are the human, social, financial and health costs of continually abandoning people to poverty and homelessness,” Pate said in an email to CTVNews.ca. “Recommendations to implement guaranteed livable income date back at least five decades, notably when recommended by 1970s reports of the Special Senate Committee on Poverty and the Commission on the Status of Women.”

As Canada’s Senate studies the bill, CTVNews.ca spoke with experts on the prospects of the program in Canada.

What is a guaranteed basic income?

While Wayne Lewchuk, a professor emeritus in the school of labour studies and the department of economics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., couldn’t guess when a guaranteed basic income program could start in Canada, he believes Canada can afford one.

He said a guaranteed basic income is a minimum payment each individual would receive on a regular basis without any restrictions.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated a national guaranteed basic income would cost about $88 billion in 2022-23.

“I think to be frank, they can’t not afford to implement basic income because we’re at a point on the development of our economy or society where an increasing number of people are being left behind, and we need to provide them with the supports which allow them to be fully functional citizens in our society,” Lewchuk said in a Zoom interview with CTVNews.ca.

Leslie Boehm, adjunct professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, adds that the basic income would require setting an income floor that no one would go below and would vary by geographic area.

“So if people go below, you provide that money for them in order to make sure they’re at that minimum income,” he said in a phone interview with CTVNews.ca.

Pate says it would work alongside other key social supports and programs such as those related to health care, housing affordability, labour protections and access to education. “It would represent an amount sufficient to afford necessities and to provide economic stability,” she explained.

Examples of programs

Canada already has significant experience with guaranteed livable income, Pate pointed out. She noted many municipalities have passed resolutions in support of implementing a basic income.

“In addition to pilots in Ontario in the 2010s and Manitoba in the 1970s, the Canada Child Benefit, the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors and the upcoming Canada Disability Benefit are all forms of basic income at the national level, for children, seniors, and those with disabilities respectively,” she explained. “As more and more people struggle to keep a roof over their head and food on their plates, more and more leaders from the local to the national level are looking to guaranteed livable income as a solution to poverty and instability. It’s not a new idea — it’s an idea whose time has come.”

Boehm said there are examples when governments did find funds for programs including during the First World War and Second World War, and as recently as the COVID-19 era. He also cited the instances when then-Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas implemented Canada’s first hospital insurance plan in the province in 1947 and then-British prime minister Clement Attlee launched the National Health Service Act 1946 that made health care free based on citizenship and need despite Saskatchewan and Britain’s economic woes.

“What you had was politicians … of conviction who wanted to do this and they found a way,” Boehm said. “Look what we afforded in COVID, we were printing money like crazy. … So if there’s a will, there’s a way.”

A well-known Canadian example that some regarded as successful was the “Mincome” program, a social experiment that lasted for four years in the 1970s.

Then-Liberal prime minister Pierre Trudeau partnered with then-Manitoba NDP premier Ed Schreyer to run the program, mostly in Dauphin, Man. The program allowed people to receive benefits each month even if they were working, with bigger payments for those with lower incomes. Researchers said Ottawa decided not to renew the program because it couldn’t afford it during a recession in the late 1970s.

How would it work?

Those designing the program would need to determine the basic level of support, or the amount of money per month, for program recipients, Lewchuk said.

The people creating the program would also need to determine how much of the funds get clawed back if a participant starts earning income, and whether it would be given to everybody or just a select group.

“On top of that, we already have a pretty extensive support system for people through ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program) and unemployment insurance and other kinds of benefits,” Lewchuk said.

“How do you integrate those into a basic income? So there are lots of design questions but I think the basic needs are pretty clear and I don’t think it’s terribly complex. What we need is to get on and give it a try. … There are still uncertainties, what the long-term implications of this (are), if we implemented a full-scale basic income for everyone over the next 10, 20 or 30 years.”

Is it realistic?

With Canada facing a labour shortage and aging population, Lewchuk said a guaranteed basic income makes sense for the country. He said it would even be realistic to launch a program nationwide rather than a small pilot.

“Pilots provide interesting evidence of how this works, but I think what we really need is a full scale launch to actually see how it’s going to work,” Lewchuk said. “It’s not cheap, but it’s also not so excessively expensive that we couldn’t imagine it in Canada.”

There’s a real cost to not implementing a basic income, Lewchuk explained. “Because a lot of people, they’re not just suffering because they don’t have enough income to provide a decent standard of living. They’re suffering because they’ve become unproductive because they don’t have enough income to provide for themselves, to cover their basic needs and allow them to be fully engaged in our society.”

One of Boehm’s concerns, however, is whether basic income would support low wages.

“And so if we implement basic income, are we not saying to all those employers that are out there, ‘OK, keep on paying an unlivable wage, not a problem,'” Boehm said. “And the responsibility then is not being placed on you to pay this livable wage, we the government will take care of that fact. So you guys continue to be greedy, not a problem, and the taxpayers will make up that difference.”

Boehm suggests that a big part of the solution is legislating a livable wage.”You know, like we legislate a minimum wage, for example,” he said. “Let’s just make our minimum wage a livable wage.”

With files from The Canadian Press, CTVWinnipeg.ca and CTV News Atlantic Journalist Jack Morse

Adblock test (Why?)

Source link

News

STD epidemic slows as new syphilis and gonorrhea cases fall in US

Published

6 hours ago

November 12, 2024

Anne Joseph

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. syphilis epidemic slowed dramatically last year, gonorrhea cases fell and chlamydia cases remained below prepandemic levels, according to federal data released Tuesday.

The numbers represented some good news about sexually transmitted diseases, which experienced some alarming increases in past years due to declining condom use, inadequate sex education, and reduced testing and treatment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Last year, cases of the most infectious stages of syphilis fell 10% from the year before — the first substantial decline in more than two decades. Gonorrhea cases dropped 7%, marking a second straight year of decline and bringing the number below what it was in 2019.

“I’m encouraged, and it’s been a long time since I felt that way” about the nation’s epidemic of sexually transmitted infections, said the CDC’s Dr. Jonathan Mermin. “Something is working.”

More than 2.4 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia were diagnosed and reported last year — 1.6 million cases of chlamydia, 600,000 of gonorrhea, and more than 209,000 of syphilis.

Syphilis is a particular concern. For centuries, it was a common but feared infection that could deform the body and end in death. New cases plummeted in the U.S. starting in the 1940s when infection-fighting antibiotics became widely available, and they trended down for a half century after that. By 2002, however, cases began rising again, with men who have sex with other men being disproportionately affected.

The new report found cases of syphilis in their early, most infectious stages dropped 13% among gay and bisexual men. It was the first such drop since the agency began reporting data for that group in the mid-2000s.

However, there was a 12% increase in the rate of cases of unknown- or later-stage syphilis — a reflection of people infected years ago.

Cases of syphilis in newborns, passed on from infected mothers, also rose. There were nearly 4,000 cases, including 279 stillbirths and infant deaths.

“This means pregnant women are not being tested often enough,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California.

What caused some of the STD trends to improve? Several experts say one contributor is the growing use of an antibiotic as a “morning-after pill.” Studies have shown that taking doxycycline within 72 hours of unprotected sex cuts the risk of developing syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia.

In June, the CDC started recommending doxycycline as a morning-after pill, specifically for gay and bisexual men and transgender women who recently had an STD diagnosis. But health departments and organizations in some cities had been giving the pills to people for a couple years.

Some experts believe that the 2022 mpox outbreak — which mainly hit gay and bisexual men — may have had a lingering effect on sexual behavior in 2023, or at least on people’s willingness to get tested when strange sores appeared.

Another factor may have been an increase in the number of health workers testing people for infections, doing contact tracing and connecting people to treatment. Congress gave $1.2 billion to expand the workforce over five years, including $600 million to states, cities and territories that get STD prevention funding from CDC.

Last year had the “most activity with that funding throughout the U.S.,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors.

However, Congress ended the funds early as a part of last year’s debt ceiling deal, cutting off $400 million. Some people already have lost their jobs, said a spokeswoman for Harvey’s organization.

Still, Harvey said he had reasons for optimism, including the growing use of doxycycline and a push for at-home STD test kits.

Also, there are reasons to think the next presidential administration could get behind STD prevention. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump announced a campaign to “eliminate” the U.S. HIV epidemic by 2030. (Federal health officials later clarified that the actual goal was a huge reduction in new infections — fewer than 3,000 a year.)

There were nearly 32,000 new HIV infections in 2022, the CDC estimates. But a boost in public health funding for HIV could also also help bring down other sexually transmitted infections, experts said.

“When the government puts in resources, puts in money, we see declines in STDs,” Klausner said.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Source link

News

World’s largest active volcano Mauna Loa showed telltale warning signs before erupting in 2022

Published

6 hours ago

November 12, 2024

Anne Joseph

WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists can’t know precisely when a volcano is about to erupt, but they can sometimes pick up telltale signs.

That happened two years ago with the world’s largest active volcano. About two months before Mauna Loa spewed rivers of glowing orange molten lava, geologists detected small earthquakes nearby and other signs, and they warned residents on Hawaii‘s Big Island.

Now a study of the volcano’s lava confirms their timeline for when the molten rock below was on the move.

“Volcanoes are tricky because we don’t get to watch directly what’s happening inside – we have to look for other signs,” said Erik Klemetti Gonzalez, a volcano expert at Denison University, who was not involved in the study.

Upswelling ground and increased earthquake activity near the volcano resulted from magma rising from lower levels of Earth’s crust to fill chambers beneath the volcano, said Kendra Lynn, a research geologist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and co-author of a new study in Nature Communications.

When pressure was high enough, the magma broke through brittle surface rock and became lava – and the eruption began in late November 2022. Later, researchers collected samples of volcanic rock for analysis.

The chemical makeup of certain crystals within the lava indicated that around 70 days before the eruption, large quantities of molten rock had moved from around 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) to 3 miles (5 kilometers) under the summit to a mile (2 kilometers) or less beneath, the study found. This matched the timeline the geologists had observed with other signs.

The last time Mauna Loa erupted was in 1984. Most of the U.S. volcanoes that scientists consider to be active are found in Hawaii, Alaska and the West Coast.

Worldwide, around 585 volcanoes are considered active.

Scientists can’t predict eruptions, but they can make a “forecast,” said Ben Andrews, who heads the global volcano program at the Smithsonian Institution and who was not involved in the study.

Andrews compared volcano forecasts to weather forecasts – informed “probabilities” that an event will occur. And better data about the past behavior of specific volcanos can help researchers finetune forecasts of future activity, experts say.

(asterisk)We can look for similar patterns in the future and expect that there’s a higher probability of conditions for an eruption happening,” said Klemetti Gonzalez.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Source link

News

Waymo’s robotaxis now open to anyone who wants a driverless ride in Los Angeles

Published

6 hours ago

November 12, 2024

Anne Joseph

Waymo on Tuesday opened its robotaxi service to anyone who wants a ride around Los Angeles, marking another milestone in the evolution of self-driving car technology since the company began as a secret project at Google 15 years ago.

The expansion comes eight months after Waymo began offering rides in Los Angeles to a limited group of passengers chosen from a waiting list that had ballooned to more than 300,000 people. Now, anyone with the Waymo One smartphone app will be able to request a ride around an 80-square-mile (129-square-kilometer) territory spanning the second largest U.S. city.

After Waymo received approval from California regulators to charge for rides 15 months ago, the company initially chose to launch its operations in San Francisco before offering a limited service in Los Angeles.

Before deciding to compete against conventional ride-hailing pioneers Uber and Lyft in California, Waymo unleashed its robotaxis in Phoenix in 2020 and has been steadily extending the reach of its service in that Arizona city ever since.

Driverless rides are proving to be more than just a novelty. Waymo says it now transports more than 50,000 weekly passengers in its robotaxis, a volume of business numbers that helped the company recently raise $5.6 billion from its corporate parent Alphabet and a list of other investors that included venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz and financial management firm T. Rowe Price.

“Our service has matured quickly and our riders are embracing the many benefits of fully autonomous driving,” Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said in a blog post.

Despite its inroads, Waymo is still believed to be losing money. Although Alphabet doesn’t disclose Waymo’s financial results, the robotaxi is a major part of an “Other Bets” division that had suffered an operating loss of $3.3 billion through the first nine months of this year, down from a setback of $4.2 billion at the same time last year.

But Waymo has come a long way since Google began working on self-driving cars in 2009 as part of project “Chauffeur.” Since its 2016 spinoff from Google, Waymo has established itself as the clear leader in a robotaxi industry that’s getting more congested.

Electric auto pioneer Tesla is aiming to launch a rival “Cybercab” service by 2026, although its CEO Elon Musk said he hopes the company can get the required regulatory clearances to operate in Texas and California by next year.

Tesla’s projected timeline for competing against Waymo has been met with skepticism because Musk has made unfulfilled promises about the company’s self-driving car technology for nearly a decade.

Meanwhile, Waymo’s robotaxis have driven more than 20 million fully autonomous miles and provided more than 2 million rides to passengers without encountering a serious accident that resulted in its operations being sidelined.

That safety record is a stark contrast to one of its early rivals, Cruise, a robotaxi service owned by General Motors. Cruise’s California license was suspended last year after one of its driverless cars in San Francisco dragged a jaywalking pedestrian who had been struck by a different car driven by a human.

Cruise is now trying to rebound by joining forces with Uber to make some of its services available next year in U.S. cities that still haven’t been announced. But Waymo also has forged a similar alliance with Uber to dispatch its robotaxi in Atlanta and Austin, Texas next year.

Another robotaxi service, Amazon’s Zoox, is hoping to begin offering driverless rides to the general public in Las Vegas at some point next year before also launching in San Francisco.

Source link