As Ontario courts grapple with the case against the provincial government on basic income, the Jesuit Forum for Social Faith and Justice is reminding Catholics that Catholic social teaching demands society must provide an economic minimum that supports families and human dignity.

Over the next 12 years the federal government promises to raise 2.1 million Canadians out of poverty and take Canada’s poverty rate from one in every eight Canadians to one in every 17 Canadians by 2030.

It was a made-in-Ontario experiment based on a concept put forth by such thinkers as Conservative Canadian Hugh Segal and American free-market advocate Milton Friedman: a basic income guarantee, something like Old Age Security and Guaranteed Income Supplement. 

OTTAWA – Anti-poverty advocates are disappointed that Ontario’s new Conservative government intends to cancel the province’s basic income pilot project, arguing that the study is important to help reduce poverty far beyond the province.

A basic income guarantee, such as the pilot project currently running in three Ontario communities, is not an infallible teaching of the Catholic Church, but it can’t be dismissed, one of the Vatican’s top economic advisors told an interfaith conference on basic income.