The concept of Basic Income is front and centre once again in policy and advocacy circles, and interest in BI is gaining across the country. While critics and proponents of Basic Income alike discuss program design and financing options, few have spoken about principles that should guide the design of a Basic Income. If anti-poverty advocates aren’t clear on these principles, we are unlikely to get the basic income we want.

Basic Income must move and keep families out of poverty, and it must be supported by a web of accompanying policies to end discrimination and income inequity. In 2016, when Ontario’s Basic Income Pilot was being designed, Campaign 2000 developed 6 guiding principles which provide an anti-poverty framework through which to assess any BI program. These foundational principles are:

• Poverty Eradication
• Inclusive Access
• Ongoing Targeted Supports
• Strong Public Services
• Ending Structural Inequities
• Better Wages for Workers  

In order for BI to successfully accelerate the reduction in poverty, and ensure dignity for all who are living in low income, these principles must be considered foundational architecture in the design of any BI program.

Read C2000’s 6 Principles to Guide Basic Income Design

Note: These principles were originally published in a chapter which was part of a compendium released in October 2016 by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Ontario Office entitled, “Basic Income: Rethinking Social Policy.”, edited by Alex Himelfarb and Trish Hennessy. The full compendium can be found at: https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/basic-income.

On August 7, Campaign 2000 submitted its priorities for the 2021 federal budget, with a focus on a COVID recovery plan.  The submission states that experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic have laid bare inequities, are amplifying inequality and bringing to light the inadequacies of our social and economic infrastructure to support families in crisis. The road to recovery must not lead us back to what we knew as ‘normal’. That status quo left far too many behind. We must use this opportunity to reimagine a just, equitable, inclusive society, which is both good for the economy and is the right thing to do. Eradicating poverty is undoubtedly essential to promoting Canada’s economic growth (Conference Board of Canada) while promoting population health, enhancing social cohesion and enabling fuller social and economic participation of all. To achieve this, we must invest in policies that equalize outcomes for families and children, including income benefits, Reconciliation, ELCC and housing for all.

Read the recommendations and full submission.

Campaign 2000, along with members of the National and Ontario Steering Committees and organizations from coast to coast to coast, calls for repayment amnesty for recipients of CERB living in low income. In order to avoid pushing people living in low income further into debt and further away from the tax system through which crucial government benefits are delivered, C2000 has provided specific recommendations on the federal government’s treatment of recipients of CERB who are living in low income and who have been deemed ineligible to receive the benefit.

The recommendations, submitted to both the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology and the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, call for a human-rights based approach towards all who have accessed emergency benefits in order to cover basic expenses at a time of heightened need. The recommendations call specifically for repayment amnesty based on annual total income and family size, and for an end to calls for penalization for anyone who received CERB and is deemed ineligible. Read the submission.

Family Service Toronto and Campaign 2000 nation-wide release a joint statement denouncing all forms of anti-Black racism, colonialism and white supremacy.   As organizations working directly in the areas of mental health and poverty eradication, we know that Black and Indigenous communities have much worse health outcomes and exponentially higher rates of poverty than white Canadians and that this is a both a result of and a strategy to maintain systemic oppression.  We have a responsibility to ensure that our work in these areas contributes to ending anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism, which cannot be done without critical self-reflection, education and dialogue.

Read the full statement and recommendations.

Read the media release.

British Columbia – First Call: Child And Youth Advocacy Coalition

Alberta – Edmonton Social Planning Council

Saskatchewan – University of Regina

Manitoba – Social Planning Council of Winnipeg

Ontario – Ontario Campaign 2000

New Brunswick – Human Development Council

Nova Scotia – CCPA office in Nova Scotia

Prince Edward Island – MacKillop Centre for Social Justice and the PEI Coalition for a Poverty Eradication Strategy

Campaign 2000: End child and family poverty in Canada, along with over 250  groups and individuals across the country sent a letter today calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the federal COVID Cabinet Committee to ensure children living in poverty from marginalized communities are central to the pandemic response and recovery plan. 

Written by the Campaign 2000 Steering Committee and endorsed by partners from across the country, the letter sets out a suite of immediate and longer-term policy solutions and fiscal investments to ensure that low-income children and families have the supports they need to survive the pandemic and thrive in the recovery.

Campaign 2000, the groups and individuals endorsing the letter propose a robust and bold plan of action.  It includes better investments and universal access to income supports, social infrastructure that prioritizes building and maintaining affordable, public childcare and housing systems as key to economic recovery efforts, and progressive tax measures to mitigate deepening inequality while generating revenue for COVID-related and poverty reduction expenditures.

Read the letter in full in English and in French.  Read our media release in English and French.

Today Campaign 2000 partners in Manitoba release their annual report card on the state of child and family poverty, Broken Promise Stolen Futures: Child and Family Poverty in Manitoba, where 1 out of every 6 children living in a two-parent family live in poverty, and 1 out of every 1.6 children living in a single parent family lives in poverty. This report finds that even with the federal Canada Child Benefit and using both the federal and provincial governments’ preferred and more forgiving poverty measure, the Market Basket Measure, Manitoba ranks 4th in both overall as well as child poverty in 2016. In 2018, there was an increase of 7% in overall poverty and 19% increase in child poverty. The report demonstrates that at this rate it will take 697.5 years to end child poverty in Manitoba.

Click here to download the media release and full report.

Campaign 2000 and the Child Welfare League of Canada have released a joint response to the federal government’s emergency aid package announced March 18.

The release details their call for more robust investments into income security measures and additional strategies to ensure vulnerable and marginalized children and caregivers have immediate access to benefits.

Follow @campaign2000 and @CWLC_LBEC for updates.

Today, Honourable Minister Ahmed Hussen, Minister of Families, Children, and Social Development, attended the C2000 National Strategy Conference to share some words about his work on housing, the Canada Child Benefit, intergovernmental collaboration, and other poverty reduction initiatives.

Minister Hussen fielded questions on a range of issues including the Multilateral Early Learning and Childcare Framework, the high rate of poverty in FN, Inuit and Métis communities and decisions around measurement, and the inaccessibility of the CCB which contributes to poverty among refugee families and children.

The Minister spoke to these questions as well as a need for policy and investment in off-reserve housing for Indigenous people, and the potential for basic income pilots across the country.

Campaign 2000 supporters made it clear that high quality, affordable, accessible childcare, and the reduction of high poverty rates among racialized and Indigenous children, must be prioritized across policy areas within the Minister’s portfolio.

Campaign 2000 looks forward to continuing to work with the Minister and the federal government on implementing the recommendations in the National Report Card released in January, and achieving forward movement on the goal of eliminating child and family poverty.

Campaign 2000, co-ordinated by Family Service Toronto, is a non-partisan coalition of 120 groups and individuals committed to ending child poverty.

Campaign 2000 and Family Service Toronto hold the C2000 National Strategy Conference at 355 Church Street, Toronto, March 4 to 5. Participants are C2000 partners from across the country.

In 1989, all federally represented parties voted unanimously in the House of Commons to end child poverty by the year 2000.  After the passing of this resolution, rates of child poverty continued to rise before they decreased.  Thirty years later, there are over 1.35 million children living in poverty with their families in Canada today and income inequality, the gap between the rich and poor, has grown to unjustifiable heights.

We have missed the opportunity to end poverty for a whole generation of children.

Released on January 14, 2020, the national report card, 2020: Setting the Stage for a Poverty-Free Canada,” provides a current snapshot of child and family poverty in the country and demonstrates the need for continued efforts to eradicate child and family poverty.
As we begin a new decade under the mandate of a new minority government, we are provided with the opportunity for collaboration on the shared goal of ending poverty for all.  We cannot afford to miss another generation of children.

The national report card is released in coordination with several provincial report cards from our partners in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia to Prince Edward Island. Winnipeg partners will release their provincial report card at the end of January and Ontario partners at the end of February.

Click on the following links to read and download the new report cards as they become available.

• National Report Card in English: 2020 Setting the Stage for a Poverty-Free Canada (updated) and French: 2020 : Préparer le terrain pour un Canada sans pauvreté

• National Campaign 2000 media release in English and French.

Check out the provincial report cards on child poverty:

• Prince Edward Island Report Card
• Nova Scotia Report Card
• New Brunswick Report Card
• Ontario Report Card (released April 2020)
• Manitoba (released April 8, 2020)
• Saskatchewan Report Card
• Alberta Report Card
• British Columbia Report Card