1er next January, a first form of basic income will come into effect in Quebec. This result dates back to an initiative of the Couillard government, which passed a law on this subject in the National Assembly on May 15, 2018. The deployment of this basic income initially provided for a 40% increase in benefits for people with severe and long-term employment restrictions, increase spread over five years. The goal was to allow approximately 84,000 people to achieve an income placing them at the level of the Market Basket Measure (MBM), the benchmark index for poverty in the country.
Reaching this threshold was deemed necessary since the measure was part of a broader policy to fight against poverty and social exclusion, prioritizing this group of fellow citizens who are overrepresented in our poverty statistics. The sums necessary to achieve this were significant, but the government of the time had ensured their future availability.
1er next January will also come into effect all of the terms and conditions that distinguish this first basic income in Quebec from a traditional social solidarity program that is limited to being more generous. These terms, it must be said, are still only partially implemented in the latest regulations adopted by the Legault government. But their introduction, even imperfect, remains a huge step that we must know how to appreciate because they prefigure, at least it is to be hoped, the future of social solidarity.
First of all, the program will be (partially) individualised. This means, among other things, that rights holders who choose to live with another person with independent income will no longer be penalized as much. The individualization of taxation and transfers has become morally necessary at a time like ours where marital mobility has increased and where the state does not have to presuppose and even less to determine the nature of economic arrangements between cohabitants, couples, friends or partners. In the future, no one should be penalized (or helped) by the state for making this very personal choice.
Then, the basic income will be (partially) cumulative, it will no longer penalize as much the beneficiaries able to add a work income to their benefit. This provision is a condition sine qua non to put an end to the phenomenon of the poverty trap that characterizes, among other things, traditional income security programs and the dilemma in which they place us when granting more to beneficiaries amounts to running the risk of pushing them further into the ‘inactivity. Nobody should be penalized if they activate to improve their lot.
Finally, this basic income will not force those entitled to become poorer in order to benefit from it. Their personal assets (house and assets) will be partially but clearly better protected than before. This last element takes us even further away from a last resort mechanism since it allows us to intervene upstream of the excessive impoverishment rather than necessitating it as our last resort programs normally do. It is counterproductive to have to become too poor before benefiting from state aid.
I remind you that these principles are still imperfectly implemented in the current version of the basic income in Quebec. There will be no shortage of performances over the next few years to point out inconsistencies and, above all, to expand its benefits to other groups. We must therefore already think about the next step, keeping these three principles in mind: the individualization of transfers and taxation of individuals, the reasonable accumulation of income and the equally reasonable protection of acquired assets. They form the heart of a solidarity of the XXIe efficient and fair century.
Quebec’s basic income is by no means universal. It is in fact an application of its principles for a group of fellow citizens particularly affected by poverty and exclusion and for whom a bold gesture had become necessary. It must, however, pave the way for a renewed vision of social solidarity, which will be more inclusive, more transparent and, for these reasons, more universal. A real floor for all rather than a social safety net which has too often had the effect in the past of trapping rather than uplifting.