THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

We, collectively, represent the principal investigators, research teams and stakeholder groups behind several distinct basic income experiments underway in Finland, Scotland, the Netherlands, the USA, Spain, Kenya and India. We profoundly regret that you chose to cancel the Ontario Basic Income Guarantee Experiment prematurely.

Each of our experimental designs is somewhat different, reflecting our own political and social context. Together these experiments have the potential to produce data upon which evidence-informed social policy might be based. Ontario represented a key piece of the analysis, and has been watched closely by policymakers and researchers around the globe.

We are deeply concerned that the experiment was cancelled with no concurrent announcement that you intend to continue the promised stipends for the full period of the planned experiment. It appears to us that 4,000 vulnerable research subjects will have made decisions to improve their lives based on participation in the experiment, only to have the promise broken. As you are no doubt aware, standards for the ethical conduct of social experiments involving humans have evolved significantly in recent years. Not only is the cancellation inconsistent with international best practices, but it violates your own Canadian policy for the ethical conduct of experiments involving humans.

Canada’s continuing leadership on balanced and humane economic policy has always mattered deeply to the international community. We ask you to reconsider. The world is watching.

Olli Kangas

The Finnish BI Experiment

Strategic Research/Academy of Finland

Professor of Practice

Dept. of Social Sciences

Fi-20014-University of Turku

Markus Kanerva

The Finnish BI Experiment

Managing Director and Founder, Tänk: Independent Finnish Think Tank

Loek Groot

Utrecht Experiment

Utrecht University School of Economics

Joe Huston

Kenya Project

Give Directly

Jurgen di Wispelaere

Policy Fellow, Institute for Policy Research

University of Bath

Philippe Van Parijs

University of Louvain: Hoover Chair of Economic and Social Ethics

Arjen Edzes

Social Assistance Experiment, Groningen

Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

Ruud Muffels

Social Assistance Experiments, Tilburg and Wageningen

Universiteit van Tilburg

CHBM Speirings

Social Assistance Experiment, Nijmegen

Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

János Betkó

Social Assistance Experiment, Nijmegen

Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

Jamie Cooke

Scottish BI Pilot Project

Director of RSA Scotland at the Royal Society of the Arts

Annie Miller

Scottish BI Pilot Project Stakeholders’ Group

Sarath Davala

Madhya Pradesh, India

Laia Ortiz

Project B-Mincome (Barcelona)

Deputy Mayor for Social Rights

Barcelona City Council

Lluis Torrens

Project B-Mincome (Barcelona)

Director of Innovation and Planning of Social Rights

Barcelona City Council

Dr. Stacia West

Co-Principal Investigator for Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED)

Dr. Amy Castro Baker

Co-Principal Investigator for Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED)

Lori Ospina

Director of Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration

Natalie Foster

Economic Security Project (USA)

Chris Hughes

Economic Security Project (USA)

Taylor Jo Isenberg

Economic Security Project (USA)

The Jain Family Foundation

Economic Security Project (USA)

Evelyn L Forget

University of Manitoba

Professor Evelyn Forget is a health economist at the University of Manitoba. Her re-examination of Mincome and ongoing work on basic income is supported by CIHR and SSHRC.

September 2018

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