In 2015, over 60 movement leaders from Canada’s Indigenous rights, social and food justice, environmental, faith-based and labour movements came together to write The Leap Manifesto, a roadmap for how Canada can transition away from fossil fuels in a way that changes the country for the better. The manifesto contains 15 demands to shape the great transition, and the thirteenth relates to a basic income guarantee:

So why this most Canadian of entreaties – a call for a debate – in this otherwise-declarative manifesto?

On one hand, for some environmentalists, feminists and advocates of Indigenous rights in this country, the progressive case for a basic income could not be more clear. An income is society’s way of recognising an individual’s contributions to the collective good. A basic income guarantee is therefore an acknowledgement of the value of the unpaid labour that underlies our collective wellbeing: the defence of our water, land and air; care of family and community – or as it’s referred to in The Leap Manifesto, the labour of caretaking ‘of people and the planet.’

A basic income set at a high enough level would also address the indignity and cruelty of our country’s current poverty-alleviation programmes, where in the country’s largest province, Ontario, recipients of social assistance survive on incomes that are up to 60% below the poverty line. As one recipient put it in an interview with the Toronto Star: ‘Someone else decides when and if I eat.’

Canada has also contributed a specific and fascinating chapter to the history of basic income.