Basic income advocates aren't giving up the fight to have Ottawa pick up the cancelled pilot program as final payments draw nearer.

Tom Cooper, director of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction, said the lobby effort continues to have the federal government take over the pilot project ahead of participants receiving their last payments at the end of March.

He said he hopes basic income will be included in the federal budget, which is being tabled March 19.

"There's still faint hope that the federal government may decide to step in at the 11th hour and rescue this project, which we're continuing to advocate for," Cooper told a Spectator editorial board meeting Wednesday. "We think it makes a lot of sense."

Ottawa has said it's up to the province to decide its social assistance policies, but federal Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos told The Canadian Press in a December interview that the current suite of federal programs could one day be enhanced to provide a minimum income of sorts to all Canadians.

Cooper questioned why the federal government would start a new program when it could pick up the remaining two years of the pilot project, which the province cancelled in July, just over a year into the three-year initiative.

The Liberal government launched the project, which included 4,500 participants in test sites in Hamilton-Brantford, Lindsay and Thunder Bay, in April 2017. Under the pilot, single people have been receiving annual payments of up to $16,989, while couples have been getting up to $24,027.

When the province killed the experiment, data collection from pilot participants stopped, too.

But a report released this week by the Basic Income Canada Network and the Ontario Basic Income Network reflects the program's initial effects on 425 of the pilot participants based on an online survey conducted from December 2018 to January 2019.

Sheila Regehr, chair of the national network, told the meeting the results revealed the immediacy of the program's benefits, from participants reporting a relief from anxiety and depression, the ability to put gas in the car or buy bus tickets to go to work and pay down debt.

"It's just very clear that if you give people half a chance, they will run with it," she said.

For basic income recipient and survey respondent Krystal Miller, the immediate effects of the additional money meant not stressing as much about bills and groceries, improving her mental health and paying down debt acquired after she lost her job four years ago.

The 36-year-old mother of a six-year-old girl, who began receiving payments last March, has not been to a food bank in a year, but she expects that will change next month.

While she went through a "rough patch" after learning about the cancellation of the program, she remains optimistic.

"I had the opportunity, I used the year to work on my health ... and going forward, I'm going to have to budget to be able to continue to live up to the obligation of making those payments," she said. "But the depression was lifted for me. Going forward into next year, it's going to be a struggle, but I still have plans in place."

npaddon@thespec.com

905-526-2420 | @NatatTheSpec

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