Canada

I don't understand why conservatives can't see this as an economic issue .... sure you can play the socialism is bad card and paint a terrible picture of people living freely off the government but it doesn't work like that.

No matter where you are on the political spectrum .... the government will always pay for the poor.

Either ....

• be a conservative and take away all benefits for the poor and let them live on their own ... and your government will end up paying for more policing, more security, more judicial services, more social services, more health care and more emergency services as people fall below a livable level and can't take care of themselves any more ... or they just fall into more crime and drug abuse as their lives degrade over time.

• be a liberal socialist and give funds and supports directly to the poor and you'll save money by reduced crime, reduced number of people drifting towards crime and reduced number of unhealthy people accessing your public and private health care that the government would have paid for any way.

It's all the same money ... either don't pay and you'd end up paying for the consequences later ... or pay it now and you'll have less of a problem to pay for later.

And no ... it won't create a utopia where people will be holding hands in unity afterwards ... there will still be problems, there will always be problems with any human system no matter how well meaning it is ... it's just that taking care of people makes the most economic sense. If you have a healthy nation full of functional people, they are all more likely to take part in the economy to make those wealthy capitalist leaders even more rich .... by not helping people, all our energy is spent just trying to take care of people as minimally as possible and keep the system from falling apart.

Can we hang Ford by the testicles too? Guy has fucked Ontario over every chance he got. And yet to get in trouble when he has been caught

DrugFraud, the scummiest skin bag ever, who Ontario has managed to elect twice as premier.

Maybe by next election Ontario will have learned its lesson.

I understand why journos do it, focusing on an individual's plight. But this is just anecdote - give us some statistical data to support the story, then bring up the individual as representative example.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Crosson is just one of the thousands of people impacted after the province scrapped the basic income pilot project (OBI) nearly six years ago.

"When I was on the OBI, I got to go and get a steak for $10 and have that for dinner once a month," said Crosson, who participated in the program in Thunder Bay and now lives in Toronto for better access to medical care.

The pilot project was launched by Kathleen Wynne's Liberal government in 2017 — in Lindsay, Hamilton and Thunder Bay — with the goal of learning how a basic income would affect people's well-being over a three-year period.

The Thunder Bay resident said the OBI helped him get into a better apartment and invest more time into his volunteer organization, StandUp4Cleanup, which he launched while in recovery from alcoholism.

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson said, "Future increases for ODSP are now tied to inflation and will occur each July, helping recipients to keep pace with the rising costs of life's essentials.

MacKinnon and other anti-poverty advocates feel hopeful about the basic income bills, especially given the longer lineups at food banks and soup kitchens in recent years.

The original article contains 1,026 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!