The lives of more than 400 low-income Ontarians receiving a basic income under the province’s three-year pilot project were showing “significant improvements” before the Ford government killed the experiment last summer, according to a new report.

Participants reported less stress and depression, fewer health problems and a greater ability to work, buy healthy food, upgrade their education and secure stable housing, says the report being released Monday by the Basic Income Canada Network.

“Many respondents talked about working hard their whole lives, often at multiple jobs, but never really having a life — until basic income made that possible,” says the report, which tries to gauge the impact of the ill-fated anti-poverty initiative in the absence of official government research.

The Ontario experiment was the largest, longest-running pilot of basic income in North America, but its potential to yield valuable data was lost when the project was cancelled, said network chair Sheila Regehr.

The network’s report, based on an online survey of 424 basic income recipients conducted from mid-December 2018 to mid-January 2019, “is designed to partially compensate for this very unfortunate missed opportunity,” she said.

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Although not scientifically valid, “survey results are clear and compelling indicators, or signposts of success, that basic income leads us on a much better path than the one we are currently following,” the report says.

For survey respondent Krystal Miller, 36, who was on social assistance for almost three years after her former employer went bankrupt in 2015, basic income allowed her to enrol in a three-year debt repayment program, make plans to go back to school and start her own business.

“With the extra money, I was able to afford rent and food and pay bills,” said Miller, one of 4,500 participants in the project’s three test sites of Hamilton-Brantford, Lindsay and Thunder Bay.

“Basic income helped me stabilize my life and make plans for the future,” said the Hamilton single mother of a 6-year-old daughter, who began receiving payments in March 2018. “I haven’t been to a food bank in a year.”

As with most participants who responded to the survey, Miller said the project’s demise has been “very, very stressful. After all this, now it’s back to the food bank.”

Under the pilot project, launched by the former Liberal government in April 2017, single people such as Miller have been receiving annual payments of up to $16,989, while couples have been getting up to $24,027. Those with disabilities got a $6,000 top-up. Payments are reduced by 50 cents for every dollar earned until incomes reach $34,000 for singles and about $48,000 for couples.

Participants receive their last payment at the end of March — barely 18 months after most began receiving the extra money — and before the government was able to do any followup studies. The project’s goal was to determine whether regular, unconditional payments improve housing, health, education, employment and social outcomes for people living on social assistance or low-wage jobs in an efficient and non-stigmatizing way.

“Responses (from the survey) show that the pilot was working — enabling women and men to get and keep jobs, pursue education and training, overcome barriers and improve health and well-being for themselves and their families,” said Regehr, whose non-profit network has been advocating for a national basic income for more than a decade.

The network identified survey participants through an online petition to save the pilot project last summer. Of 30,000 people who signed, 1,500 indicated they were getting the basic income and would be open to further advocacy.

The network’s 22-question survey asked participants how the extra money was impacting their employment, education, food security, finances, plans for the future, mobility, health and social inclusion.

When they enrolled in the project, most participants said they were experiencing stress, struggling to pay rent and having trouble affording healthy food, according to an intake survey, the only official data collected before the project was cancelled.

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The network’s followup poll found basic income eased those pressures for most respondents.

For example, about 88 per cent reported experiencing less stress and 73 per cent said they suffered less depression. That compares to 81 per cent at the start of the project who told government researchers they were suffering from moderate to severe psychological stress, Regehr said.

More than 74 per cent who responded to the network’s survey said basic income allowed them to make healthier food choices, compared to almost half who were experiencing severe food insecurity when the project began.

Although the survey is not a randomized sample of participants, the results will be useful for future research, said University of Manitoba professor Evelyn Forget.

Forget’s groundbreaking 2011 research on a mid-1970s federal-provincial trial of basic income in rural Dauphin, Man., found hospital use dropped and the high school completion rate increased when low-income households received unconditional cash payments.

“The purpose of a basic income is to give people more control over their lives and the opportunity to plan for the future,” Forget said. “One of the things we can see from the results (of the network’s Ontario survey) is when given the opportunity, people do tend to use their money in pretty reasonable ways to improve their quality of life.”

Although Forget fears interest in basic income has waned in Canada, she said the network’s report will help other jurisdictions, particularly in the United States, where several large cities are about to announce projects.

The cancellation of Ontario’s experiment is a blow to international researchers in the field, said Lauren Burns-Coady, a Canadian working in New York City for the Jain Family Institute, a non-profit research organization that provides research and design advice for several U.S. basic income initiatives.

But the network’s survey “tries to capture at least some information about what happened in the lives of some people who received this money.

“It paints such a vivid picture of how people made their decisions, how they spent their money — and how quickly they made some pretty significant changes in their lives,” she said.

One participant got a driver’s licence, another bought brushes and rollers to start a painting business. Someone else bought new clothes for a job interview.

Some used the money for recreation classes for themselves or their children, while others said it allowed them to visit family and friends.

“These fine-grained details help us hone in on the kind of outcomes we want to look at in other studies,” Burns-Coady said.

Seniors and children in Canada have been receiving forms of basic income for years, Regehr said. “Our report shows the potential of a basic income for everyone.”

Note - March 4, 2019: This article was edited from a previous version to update a photo caption.

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