Having written about guaranteed annual income (GAI) many times over the past five years, I was pleased to read Cape Breton-Canso MP Mike Kelloway’s May 10 opinion piece in the Cape Breton Post about the possibility of introducing such a plan in Canada, but rather taken aback by the bizarreRead More

This past week, I listened to a podcast from the Conference Board of Canada’s “Bright Future” series featuring my old friend (meaning, someone I quote frequently), Hugh Segal, who has for years (since he “had hair”) been a fierce proponent of guaranteed annual income (GAI). Asked by host Michael BassettRead More

Well, we’ve discovered at least two things since the COVID-19 cloud descended upon us, one being that we won’t be telling our grandchildren about the pandemic since they’re living through it with us and will have their own stories to tell. Secondly, a Guaranteed Annual Income (GAI) is not onlyRead More

The key word heard most since the COVID-19 virus took over our lives is “together” and, in the final analysis, if we don’t overcome this “together” by strictly following all the rules that have been set out for us by competent people who struggle to make us aware of justRead More

Earlier this year, the idea of a guaranteed annual income (GAI) was in the news, including in The Cape Breton Spectator where yours truly wrote about Ontario’s plan to “launch a pilot project to assess whether a basic income can better support vulnerable workers, improve health and education outcomes forRead More

Back in March of this year, the United Way of Cape Breton, together with the Cape Breton Regional Municipality, sponsored the Community Impact Summit at Centre 200, a coming together of “business, government and non-profit sector leaders…to commit to specific, positive actions to help citizens living in poverty,” or asRead More

As kids, we weren’t very impressed by our mother’s “war stories” of walking six miles to school after feeding the chickens and having a big bowl of porridge (she hated it so much we were never forced to eat it). She didn’t talk too much about her life as aRead More

In July 2011, Elaine Power wrote a scathing account of food banks in The Globe and Mail, declaring “they have become a serious obstacle in the fight against poverty” and “it was time to close them down.” Power, at the time an associate professor in the School of Kinesiology andRead More