Universal basic income (UBI) has gone from an outlandish concept to the mainstream for one reason: Covid-19.

Just a few weeks ago, former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang campaigned on UBI. This week, U.S. senator Mitt Romney proposed sending every American a one-time $1000 cheque during the pandemic, and even stalwartly conservative activists have voiced support for the idea.

This comes as no surprise to Dr. Evelyn Forget, a health economist and professor at the University of Manitoba. In the 1970s, Canada’s then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Manitoba’s NDP government ran the Mincome project in Dauphin, Manitoba, an experimental pilot project that gave the poorest residents a monthly cheque, no strings attached. The project was shelved after a new government came in and the data sat in boxes in a warehouse for more than 30 years until Forget decided to analyze the results in 2006. She’s also the author of Basic Income for Canadians, making her literally the person who’s wrote the book on the subject. We spoke with her over the phone, from a healthy physical distance.

Diana Duong: How has the conversation on universal basic income changed over the past few years?

Dr. Evelyn Forget: In Canada, when we talk about the basic income, what we tend to support is a targeted program, so the amount you receive depends on your income from other sources — rather than the government cutting a $1000 cheque every month for everybody. It’s a very particular kind of basic income that tends to be quite different than from other places.

People pay a lot more attention to basic income in times of trouble like this than when the economy seems to be chugging along fine and there are a lot of jobs. It’s not a surprise that people are now looking at basic income again in the same way that they did in 2008 and 2009 after the stock market collapsed.

Every time the economy goes belly up, we start talking about basic income. One of the the most significant times that people were paying attention to basic income was when we ran the Mincome project. That was in the 1970s when everything was collapsing again. So yes, every time the economy goes belly up, we start talking about basic income.

DD: You must be tired of talking about this.

I’d like to see this implemented, [laughs]. Then people would stop asking me whether I expect to see it.

DD: This past week, the government announced an $82-billion dollar aid package. Should that money be spent on a basic income instead?

I think if we had a basic income in place, it would have been very easy for the government to increase payments to Canadians and to adapt to this particular crisis. But the fact that we don’t have one in place means that the government is facing the question of how to most quickly roll out support. Since we don’t have the infrastructure in place right now to deliver a basic income, topping up existing programs will get money into peoples’ hands more quickly than trying to design and implement a targeted basic income in a very short period of time.

D.D.: So would now be the right time to talk about a basic income? It does feel like we are all acting as more of a collective and there is more recognition of the working class — the Amazon warehouse workers, grocery store workers, small businesses.

I think so. Many of us have recognized for a while that there are a lot of gaps in our existing social programs.

Employment insurance (EI) used to work a lot better than it works today. It’s simply because people are working quite differently now than they did when those programs were designed. If you talk about how employment insurance can support people during this kind of downturn, you realize that a lot of people get left out simply because they’re working the kinds of jobs where they don’t work enough hours to qualify, or they’re relying on tips and that doesn’t show up as part of their insured earnings.

I think we are beginning to recognize the shortcomings of the existing programs we have in place. If we’re going to change those programs to better support Canadians going forward, I think basic income becomes part of the conversation the next time a crisis hits — or even in this crisis depending on how long it lasts. We need to find a better way of thinking about how we can get together and fill in the gaps in the existing social programs.

D.D.: You mention a targeted basic income, which sounds different from Mitt Romney or Andrew Yang’s universal basic income ‘for every American’. What would be more effective in Canada?

The biggest difference between the two is the amount the government has to spend to actually roll it out initially. The same amount of money goes a lot further if you target it, rather than if you spend it generally.

People who support a universal program always say, ‘we’ll get it back through the tax system,’ but that means increasing taxes rather dramatically. So at the end of the day, if you have a universal program like Andrew Yang’s suggestions, what you end up with is a much larger government expenditure and much larger taxation, so it becomes sort of a political challenge to sell it in a country like Canada. I think it’s politically a lot more feasible to talk about a targeted program simply because the amount of money the government has to access to run that program in the first instance is much, much smaller.

D.D.: Whose lives would a basic income improve the most in this outbreak?

The people who would gain the most from it are the people who are going to be hurt the most from coronavirus. These are people with precarious jobs, people working part-time with no guaranteed hours, people working on contract, people without the benefits that come with standard jobs.

We don’t really have programs for working-age adults that that assist that population very well. For people who are currently dependent on provincial income assistance in Ontario, like Ontario Works or ODSP, basic income might be a little bit more generous, but it’s not going to make a huge amount of difference in their lives. The real difference is going to come from people in the workforce and working at jobs that don’t guarantee them the kinds of support we’ve traditionally depended on the labour market to deliver.

Another thing we’re seeing from coronavirus is the amount we depend on people to provide unpaid labour, particularly women. When schools and daycares close, what do we do with the kids? Somebody has to take care of them. A basic income is a way of recognizing and supporting people to provide some of that unpaid labour.

A basic income is a way of recognizing and supporting people to provide some of that unpaid labour

And it’s not just kids. It’s people who are doing the shopping for their elderly parents, making sure their older neighbours are taken care of. Those are the very necessary kinds of labour that make a society continue to function, but it’s labour that just isn’t recognized by our existing economy. I think a basic income goes a little way towards recognizing and supporting that kind of labour and making sure we can provide support for others.

D.D.: How would a basic income change the course of this pandemic in Canada?

People who don’t have adequate income generally live in overcrowded housing and tend to have less access to adequate diets. They have less money to support the healthy habits that public health confidently tells people like them they’re supposed to be practising in order to keep themselves safe. We talk about social distancing, well, it’s really hard to get social distancing if you’re living on a reserve with 10 or 15 people without adequate water to wash your hands, without reasonable diets, and without the kind of space and supports that income can provide.

This is why health is so strongly associated with income. It certainly doesn’t prevent infection, but it helps you protect yourself. Say you’ve got a 1500-square foot house, for example, with internet, ways to entertain your kids, and a freezer full of food. It’s a lot harder if you’re living in a one-bedroom apartment with a couple of kids and they’re having to go outside to play with their friends because you’ve got no way of entertaining them. Even if you’ve got the money to stockpile food, where would you put it?

D.D.: Some people believe that with a basic income, people will stop working. What has your research showed?

This has been examined in so many different instances and there’s never been any strong evidence that people quit their jobs if they’re offered a basic income.

Most people want to work, people try very hard to find jobs. That said, it really depends on designing your program properly so you’re not setting up a situation in which it actually costs people to go to work. The onus is on the people who introduce basic income to design it properly.

We’re going to see over the next few weeks how badly people want to get back to work

What a basic income does do is make it possible for people to stay home if they’re sick, for example. It certainly makes it possible for people to stay home with their kids if that becomes necessary. But I don’t think you’ll see sort of a mass infection of the Canadian population with laziness, to stay home and play video games. In fact, one thing we’re going to see over the next few weeks is how badly people want to get back to work.

Right now, it’s been a few days so people are probably still enjoying bingeing Netflix and reading novels. But give it another week or two and people will be pining to get back to work and be productive.

For a lot of people, the structure of the job is a very important thing — they’re simply not going to run away from the labour market. I know of a long-time volunteer at the Winnipeg Harvest, a major food bank here. He’s an older man with some substance use issues, so he has a lot of trouble holding a paid job. On the other hand he’s at Winnipeg Harvest seven to eight hours a day, five days a week just because he likes structure. He thinks working at Harvest keeps him away from trouble. People seek out that kind of structure in their lives and people will continue to work for all sorts of reasons.

Diana Duong is an editor and writer at Healthing.