(Chair) in the chair.

[English]

Honourable senators, I wish to welcome all of you, as well as the viewers across the country who are watching us on SenCanada.ca.

[Translation]

My name is Percy Mockler, senator from New Brunswick and Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance. Now, I would like to ask my colleagues to introduce themselves starting on my left, please.

Clément Gignac from Quebec.

Senator Tony Loffreda from Montreal, Quebec.

[English]

Good evening. I’m Yuen Pau Woo from British Columbia.

[Translation]

Good evening. René Cormier, senator from New Brunswick.

[English]

Kim Pate, and I live here in the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg.

Larry Smith, Montreal, Quebec.

Elizabeth Marshall, Newfoundland and Labrador.

[Translation]

Jean-Guy Dagenais from Montreal, Quebec.

[English]

Honourable senators, today we are resuming our study of Bill S-233, An Act to develop a national framework for a guaranteed livable basic income, which was referred to this committee on April 18, 2023, by the Senate of Canada.

This evening, we have the pleasure of welcoming, by video conference, David Green, Professor, Vancouver School of Economics, University of British Columbia.

On behalf of the senators of the National Finance Committee, thank you for accepting our invitation to appear in front of the committee.

We will start with your opening remarks, and then we will proceed to questions from senators. The floor is yours, Professor Green.

Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this committee. I am a professor in the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia, or UBC, but, of more relevance for this, I was the chair of a panel created by the B.C. government to investigate basic income, or BI, as a possible policy tool for the province. The panel consisted of Professor Lindsay Tedds, Professor Rhys Kesselman and myself. We were given two years with a mandate to consider whether B.C. should shift to centring the transfer and support system on a BI or, alternatively, how to otherwise reform the system. We were given considerable resources and access to rich administrative data. Using that, we commissioned over 40 research papers, both on issues with the current transfer system and investigating claims made about a BI. We also had extensive discussions with affected groups and implemented a unique opinion survey. We carried out simulations of over 1,600 variants of BI policies, and had extensive discussions with civil servants in a wide set of B.C. government ministries that would be affected by a BI and the reforms that we set out as alternatives.

Our work is available as a 500-page report, which, along with all of the research papers, is available at bcbasicincomepanel.ca and in a book we published with the Institute for Research on Public Policy, or IRPP. We believe that our work constitutes the most thorough evaluation of a basic income carried out in Canada and possibly anywhere in the world.

We framed our investigation in the context of the question of what policies would move Canada toward being a more just society. In fact, we developed a new policy analysis framework centred on this question, taking the goal as a society that provides the basis of equal self-respect and social respect. I view those goals as ones shared with people who advocate for a BI. I also agree that, in some circumstances, a guaranteed income is part of what is needed and would endorse some of what are called basic incomes, but the basis of self-respect and social respect also includes respectful workplaces, real opportunities, supportive communities and mental health supports. I worry that a general BI as a policy goal misses that and, in particular, misses how income supports interact with creating those other conditions in complicated ways.

I also agree with BI advocates that the current system is problematic in its levels of support, complexity and failure to treat those in need with sufficient respect. In fact, we spent considerable time in our report detailing those problems. A BI has the appearance of a simple, direct response to those problems. What could be simpler than sending people money through the existing tax system? But when we think about how to actually implement it in a way that integrates with our existing systems, it no longer appears so simple.

We did the exercise of documenting all the support programs that all the levels of government supply, and asking if each could be replaced by a BI. The answer in almost every case was “no.” That means creating a BI will create new complex interactions, and even the seemingly simple idea of delivering it through the tax system is not so simple. Eight per cent of Canadians do not file taxes in a year, and, with taxes only assessed annually, people who experience a loss in income won’t be able to register their need for support through the tax system for between 4 and 16 months. To address these problems would require creating a system that finds non-filers and works on a sub-annual frequency. In other words, it would require creating a system that looks much like existing income assistance systems. As we show, the welfare wall would be just as high or higher under the new system than under the current tax and transfer system.

A BI is not a simpler system. It’s another complex system, but maybe it’s a better complex system. The research studies that were part of our report assess claims in a wide variety of areas: A basic income would reduce health care costs and improve health, increase entrepreneurial activity, allow workers to walk away from bad jobs and so on. In each case, we found that a BI might have positive effects, but there was an alternative policy that was better.

By our assessment, a BI is an expensive approach that will provide inferior results in terms of moving us toward a more just economy. To be clear, we believe that we need to spend money to address the problems our society faces. We certainly agree those problems are real. The point is that there are more effective ways to spend money.

This returns us to the broader question of the goal of the policies. If it is just a numerical goal of reducing the number of people below the poverty line, then a BI is a very direct way to do that. But if it is to create a more just society, it is much less clear.

One way to express this is that poverty is about much more than a lack of income. It is about a lack of respect and integration. A cash-centred approach supports monetary autonomy, but ignores the fact that true autonomy is built on a base of community, self-respect, health and housing. I worry that such an individualistic approach like a BI puts the onus of fixing our existing systems — with their embedded structural inequities — on the shoulders of the vulnerable people themselves. It purposely chooses a more individualistic over a more community-oriented society.

A key example is support for youth aging out of foster care — one of the most vulnerable groups in society. Simply giving them a basic income and wishing them well is evidently not a good approach. We advocate a policy that includes a phased-out secure income, but that emphasizes building community and personal supports. It’s not that BI advocates are against those other supports; it’s that a general BI approach acts like you can separate the income and the other elements, and, in doing so, it could end up being an ineffective way of spending our policy dollars for creating a more just society.

Thank you again for this opportunity. I look forward to your questions.

Thank you very much, Professor Green. Honourable senators, the round will be five minutes each.

Thank you very much for your presentation. It sounds very interesting.

What was the outcome? It sounds like you did a lot of research. When you were speaking, you were saying “such-and-such, but” — what was the outcome? Was it that you did the research for the sake of the research and now we have a body of research, or did you come up with some recommendations? Was there a pilot? Tell us the rest of the story. You told us the first part.

That’s right; I gave you the teaser. We were commissioned to examine whether a basic income would be a good policy for British Columbia, but also whether there should be a pilot to study it further.

We were given a broader mandate to say, “If not a basic income, then what else?” We set out with quite an open mind, trying to put together a body of evidence that would be useful for other people, even if they didn’t agree with what we concluded, and that’s part of what we think we created.

Do you think the government should go ahead and implement a basic income, or do you feel that the work you did didn’t quite convince you?

It’s the latter. We came to the conclusion that in most of the policy areas that we considered — and we considered a lot of them — a basic income was often a path that would help, but there were better, more direct and more effective ways to spend policy dollars. In the end, we came up with a set of alternatives instead of a basic income.

I should say that, in some of the areas, we recommended what you might call a targeted basic income — for example, for people living with disabilities — but, as an overall policy goal, we didn’t endorse a general basic income, and we also recommended against a basic income pilot.

Okay. Did you change anything? You were saying that there is a certain system, and then that complex system would end up being replaced by a different complex system.

Were there any changes at all as a result of your research? Or did you come to the conclusion that it was very complex, and, therefore, you maintained the status quo? I’m asking because I was in charge of the social assistance program in Newfoundland and Labrador at one point, so I can relate to this.

Where did you go with it? Did you actually take a group of people and do a pilot in something?

That’s a great question. I appreciate knowing your background, so I know that you’re aware of everything I’m talking about.

We didn’t do a pilot. Ours was meant to be input to further deliberations of the kind that I’m sure you’re familiar with. In fact, B.C. is going through a renovation of its income assistance system right now, and our report fed into that. We’ve been talked to several times to talk about how to do that.

As a useful example, as you know, a large portion of the income assistance and social assistance systems in Canadian provinces right now have to do with people living with disabilities. We recommended a big suite of changes that would make access simpler, as well as make a whole part of it more dignified, and would bring the benefits up in a permanent basic income way to the poverty line — because now they’re below it — but it also had a big part that was assisted to work. We heard from people living with disabilities that there was a feeling that this was a system that punished them for trying to work or even volunteer. We were trying to find our way toward a system that was more respectful and more dignified, with better supports, and our feeling was that a basic income alone was really not going to do that.

Thank you very much. It’s very interesting.