Examining productive activities while receiving the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) in Atlantic Canada: Implications for Employment Commitment and a Universal Basic Income [Pascoe-Deslauriers]
This research contributes to debates on the potential disincentive effects of a UBI, suggesting that most people engage in a range of socially important activities that align with their interests, skills and the needs of their household and network, and find value in engaging in productive activities. Moreover, while some people struggle to find ways to engage in productive activity, their desire for work and work-like activities appears high and potential interventions could support activity-matching.

Social protection and tax expenditures in Quebec: an assessment of the current state of affairs [Provencher]
In addition to program spending in the form of cash (transfers to individuals) and in-kind (provision of public services), Social Tax Expenditures (STE’s) represents a funding mechanism to be considered in generating knowledge about the architecture of a Negative Income Tax that could serve as a Basic Income Guarantee for working age adults in Québec, Canada.

Rachelle Pascoe-Deslauriers, Mount Allison University

Dr. Rachelle Pascoe-Deslauriers is assistant professor in Commerce and Women’s & Gender Studies at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. Dr Pascoe-Deslauriers has research expertise in the areas of workplace innovation, and around workplace and labour market policy to protect and improve the quality of jobs for workers. She will be applying her research expertise in the areas of organizational and employment policy to this project.

Ysabel Provencher, Ph D., Université Laval, Québec, Canada

Ysabel Provencher is full professor of Social Work at Laval university, in Quebec, Canada. Her research focuses on income security systems and issues related to renewal of social protection. She is particularly interested about how public expenditures on social protection translates more and more into tax policy and how this limits debate on public spending. For her, the debate on financing the basic income must be the business of all and not only of the economists.

Cynthia Dyck is conducting research on individuals who received the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB). CERB was a government program started in March 2020 for those who were forced to stop working or who lost hours/earnings because of COVID-19. Dyck is looking at how CERB recipients used their time while not working but receiving a stable form of income.

Jim Mulvale, Faculty of Social Work, University of Manitoba

Jim Mulvale is a faculty member in Social Work at the University of Manitoba.  He teaches courses on social welfare policy and has published on universal basic income and on social work theory and education as they relate to social justice and ecological sustainability.  He is currently on the steering group for a project on “Livelihoods, Incomes, and Community Resilience for a Net-Zero Canada” funded by Environment and Climate Change Canada.

Evidence of employment commitment under the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit; From Social Tax Expenditures to Basic Income