Critical Reflection Assignment (15%)

To complete this assignment, you will need to read the article in Macleans, Magazine by Nadine
Yousif, on July 8, 2020, entitled Has enthusiasm for CERB paved the way for a universal basic
income?

The article is found below these instructions

Or
Follow this link:
https://www.macleans.ca/economy/has-enthusiasm-for-the-cerb-paved-the-way-for-a-
universal-basic-income/

After reading the article, answer the question of its title, that is, Has enthusiasm for CERB paved
the way for a universal basic income?

Answer this question reflectively analyzing the pros and cons of a universal basic income. State
your position clearly, in favour or against and why?

Directives and tips:

 600 words maximum excluding title page and reference page.

 I will not read or grade anything beyond 600 words
 Do not summarize the article as I have read it a few times
 Reread the question multiple times so you can reflect on your thoughts as you reread
them. It’s a good idea to note them on paper
 The author of the article did not answer the question, but merely raised the question
providing some thoughts from both camp, so don’t look for the “right” answer. Look to
support “your” answer
 Reread the article 4-5 times. As your read pick up ideas, words, thoughts, images, or any
content that strikes you. Jot those down on a list
 Then think about your answer. Ask yourself, am I for UBI (Universal Basic Income) or
against UBI? Why? What are my reasons? How are my reasons supported?
  Yes, you may go to other sources to support your point of view. Don’t forget to cite
them on your reference page.

An Important Point:
You cannot be in the middle. You are either FOR or AGAINST the universal basic income. Argue
your point from one perspective only. Put yourself in the position that you have to convince
someone of your perspective.
Remember to also be cognizant of the economy.

THE ARTICLE IS ON THE NEXT PAGE BELOW

The economic salve of the CERB has changed attitudes about income assistance as COVID-19
has exposed fragility in many facets of the Canadian economy—but UBI is not without its critics
By Nadine Yousif July 8, 2020

The CERB gave Rennie the financial support and time she needed to plan a new business
(Photograph by Carmen Cheung)
For a few all-too-fleeting years, Mark Taylor believed in the future of Alberta’s oil and gas
industry. Armed with his petroleum systems engineering degree from the University of Regina,
Taylor landed a job at a Calgary energy services company in 2011. The money was good, and
the role was exactly what he had trained for. Then came the industry downturn in 2014. Oil
prices plummeted and the inevitable followed: Taylor became a casualty of his employer’s
second round of layoffs in January 2015.
The 47-year-old quickly filed away any hope for future employment in his industry. “Oil field
services have taken a massive hit over the last five years,” he reflects. “If the producers aren’t
drilling, then there are no opportunities for people to get back in.”
What followed was a flurry of self-reinvention for Taylor while he attempted to earn a living
that could support his two children and pay his bills. He trained to become a leadership coach
while on employment insurance (EI), then became the executive director of the Alberta Party,
which styled itself as a centrist alternative on the provincial political scene. But after a crippling
loss in the province’s 2019 election—the party failed to land a single seat in the legislature—his
job was once again on the chopping block.
Back on EI, Taylor was finally able to gain part-time employment in March at a local community
college, teaching Microsoft software. But he’d only been on the job for two weeks when COVID-
19 made its way to Calgary. Classes were moved online and some students dropped out. Taylor
found himself unemployed again, this time ineligible for EI due to his brief stint as an educator.
Related

CERB extension delays tough questions for workers hurt by COVID-19

Workers who are rehired may have to cancel and repay their CERB payments. Here's how.
Then came Trudeau’s announcement of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB)—a
“blessing,” Taylor says. The taxable, $2,000-per-month federal benefit for people whose
incomes had been affected by the coronavirus pandemic was initially available from March 15
to Oct. 3, but Trudeau has since extended the benefit by eight weeks as economic uncertainty
looms. A staggering 8.4 million Canadians—22 per cent of the country’s population—have
applied.
For Taylor, the benefit enabled him to reconsider his path once again. This time, he began
exploring a career in policing and has used his time during lockdown to get back into shape.
He’s not the only one reinventing: Lauren Rennie of Hamilton, Ont., was also laid off from the
education sector, where she worked as an international recruiter for new Canadian teachers
looking for experience abroad in the United Kingdom. She says the CERB has enabled her to
look into starting her own ESL tutoring business, which is set to launch in September, without
having to worry about putting food on the table or paying rent.
Stories like hers and Taylor’s typify how the economic salve of the CERB has changed attitudes
about income assistance as COVID-19 has exposed fragility in many facets of the Canadian
economy, casting people out of work while leaving others desperate to transition out of
struggling industries, like oil and gas. In doing so, it has reignited the slow-burning debate over
a universal basic income (UBI), with advocates, workers and some economists arguing in favour
of a minimum financial support to replace the CERB after the pandemic. The added safety net,
say proponents, will help lift many out of poverty for generations to come.
READ: Pulling off a bureaucratic miracle: How the CERB got done
Rennie thinks the idea’s time may have come because so many Canadians have seen first-hand
how it can help them rebound after a crisis. “Living through something is what really solidifies
an opinion,” she says, “and I wouldn’t have such a strong opinion for basic income if I hadn’t
lived through this.” The growing support is reflected in polls: 62 per cent expressed support for
a government-funded guaranteed income program in a May survey conducted by Toronto-
based Public Square Research in collaboration with Maru/Blue. That number is a boost in
comparison to a poll conducted by Concordia University and the Pierre Elliott Trudeau
Foundation in 2013, where only 46 per cent of Canadians said they agreed with its
implementation.
Hugh Segal, the former senator and Progressive Conservative political operative, is a long-time
champion of basic income—partly due, he says, to growing up in a working-poor family. To
Segal, the CERB has been a game-changer in demonstrating how a uniform income safety net
can be done quickly and efficiently through the Canada Revenue Agency; it provided rapid
relief, without bureaucratic hoops, for those who woke up one day with no job.
The demonstrated need for the CERB, and the swiftness with which it was rolled out, could
pave the way for a more permanent program as the nature of work changes due to the
pandemic, he says, adding: “The long-term, 25-year job in a company that you get after you
graduate is really no longer part of our economic circumstance.”
Segal envisions a base income for adults between the ages of 18 and 64 who find themselves in
need for a wide array of reasons—their jobs pay below the poverty line, say, or they are
freelancers riding the crests and troughs of the gig economy. It would allow many in Canada to
get by, he argues, especially those who live in rural areas or Indigenous communities, where
the poverty rate is significantly higher than the national average.
READ: Furloughed workers with COVID-19 fears can’t just stay home and collect CERB
He also argues the benefits would carry through to the health-care system. “We know from the
COVID experience that people who are low-income get sick sooner, are more susceptible to
disease and end up in the hospital quicker,” Segal says. “All of those things cost us a huge
amount of money.”
The trickle-down effects were at least partly substantiated by a basic-income pilot project run in
the 1970s in Manitoba. The experiment was shut down after five years by then-premier Sterling
Lyon and the Progressive Conservatives of Manitoba in 1979, and no official report was
commissioned on its results. Yet subsequent studies by the University of Manitoba showed
hospital visits decreased in participating communities by 8.5 per cent. A similar pilot project in
Ontario, championed by Segal, was shut down after a year by the government of Premier Doug
Ford. Its outcomes, too, were left unexamined.
The idea of basic income is, of course, not without critics. A 2013 academic study by current
federal Treasury Board president Jean-Yves Duclos found a proposed minimum-income
program for Quebec “would have strong negative impacts on labour market participation rates,
and mostly so among low-wage workers.” It’s also expensive. An estimate from Canada’s
Parliamentary Budget Officer says six months of basic income could cost the
government between $47.5 billion and $98.1 billion, a price tag that might shake Canadians’
newfound enthusiasm. A recent Angus Reid Institute poll also found that, while six out of 10
respondents supported a UBI, a slightly greater portion, 64 per cent, was unwilling to pay more
in taxes to fund it. (Segal counters that a federal basic-income program would also provide $20
billion in relief by replacing existing provincial welfare programs.)
Meanwhile, Andrew Scheer, outgoing leader of the Conservative Party, has expressed concern
that the CERB is deterring people from returning to work. “This failure must be reversed before
it is too late,” he said in May. “Canada’s economic recovery depends on it.”
READ: How to apply for CERB if you’re laid off because of COVID-19
Such fears are not without basis, says Dan Kelly of the Canadian Federation of Independent
Business, which represents around 110,000 small and medium-sized businesses in Canada. The
organization conducted a survey of its members in which 37 per cent said they have concerns
related to staffing, including their employees’ refusal to return to work. “My view is that it’s
going to be a messy recovery, because there’s all sorts of reasons why employees won’t be
going back to work,” Kelly says, citing lack of access to child care and fears of catching COVID-
19. “We spent three months telling every Canadian not to leave their house except for a weekly
trip to the grocery store. So it’s an abrupt shock to the system.”
In the face of these challenges, the CERB has done the opposite of persuading Kelly of a need
for a basic income. “Our early experiment with this suggests that a universal basic income
would mean the elimination of a motivation to work,” he says. It would be a mistake, he adds,
to turn Canada’s social safety net on its ear because of shortcomings during the exceptional
circumstance of a pandemic.
Kelly believes a rapid and robust wage subsidy program is a better approach to dealing with
long-term work disruption, allowing employers to keep staff on payroll, and to get them back
on shift quickly when the economic hardship passes.
Still, the shock of the pandemic—and the economic upheavals before it—has led a growing
number of Canadians to experience a close brush with poverty. And that may slowly but surely
change minds. Taylor acknowledges that, not long ago, “being a downtown Calgary oil and gas
engineer,” he would have seen the CERB as a cash grab of taxpayer dollars. But that was a
different time.“Fast-forward five years, having been laid off three times and looking at what the
Alberta economy is going to look like in the next five years,” Taylor says, “I’m much more of a
supporter.”

This article appears in print in the August 2020 issue of Maclean’s magazine with the headline,
“A floor for soft landings.” Subscribe to the monthly print magazine here.