Alternatives North held a press conference today to introduce their new ‘Foundations for Action’ plans for a Basic Income Guarantee to the Northwest Territories.
“The guaranteed benefit must be enough to help recipients meet their basic income expenses and live with dignity.” Report Author Sheila Regehr said.
Alternatives North says once the program is designed, there are several ways the GNWT can start delivering it through pilot projects and programs.
Regehr says that within their report on poverty in the north, they found Canadians ‘won’t mind small tax increases to better their society’ and the country already has taxation benefits in place and basic income is just a matter of redistributing money.
“There are several small programs that deliver cash benefits to people alongside programs in the tax system that are non-refundable which means if you’re low income you won’t get much benefit from those, but you can re-design those to make sure that people who are in need of those get them.” Regehr told MyTrueNorthNow.
“We have a tax system that really benefits wealthy people, so part of what we can do is simplify the system and redistribute money,” she added.
Foundations for Action did not provide an exact figure of income that will be considered ‘low’ if the plan is adopted; however, Project Liaison Suzzette Montreuil says measurements to determine poverty are included in the foundation’s report.
“We talked about using the Market Basket Measure for the north, which was established a couple of years ago as a measure, and we could use that as a guideline for who would be eligible for funding,” Montreuil told MyTrueNorthNow.
The foundation has plans to introduce the pitch to the government in the future.
