Senator Kim Pate is behind a senate bill to develop a national framework for a guaranteed livable basic income. It is currently being studied by the Senate’s Committee on National Finance.
Pate told Nation to Nation host Annette Francis that one of the big reasons she introduced Bill S-233 was to start a discussion about what kind of model should be looked at to help people get out of poverty.
“When you provide enough resources, enough for people to live on, people get housed, they get fed, and they get out of poverty faster, they get out of homelessness,” she said.
“When you actually provide money to people who are living in poverty, guess what, they spend it in their communities, they pay rent, they buy food, they clothe themselves, they maybe get stuff for their kids.”
Pate said NDP MP Leah Gazan’s Bill C-233 is basically the same.
“We decided to introduce them both in the House of Commons and at the Senate at the same time, just to try and give it the best chance of going forward. I’m hoping that the Senate will pass it and then the House of Commons will look at it.”
Government watchdog slams the RCMP Investigation into the SNC Lavalin scandal
Earlier this week, Democracy Watch released 1,800 pages it received from an access to information request it made regarding the SNC Lavalin scandal.
The records centred on how the RCMP investigated the office of Prime Minister Trudeau and his cabinet officials. It also looked at whether former justice minister and attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould was influenced concerning the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin.
The scandal led to Wilson-Raybould eventually being expelled from the Liberal caucus.
Democracy Watch Co-founder Duff Conacher described the investigation as hap-hazard on Nation to Nation.
“The RCMP rolled over like a negligently, weak lapdog, very superficial investigation, only talked to three people, reviewed the public document,” he said. “And the testimony that the ethics commissioner had obtained in his report, finding prime minister Trudeau guilty of violating the federal ethics law, didn’t go further, didn’t try to go to court to get a search warrant, to get the secret cabinet documents that the Trudeau cabinet was refusing to give them, and then took more than a year to respond to our access information request, which is a violation of the federal open government law.”
According to Conacher, you have to look at all communication, emails, phone logs, text messages.
“The RCMP again didn’t even try to get those communications,” he said.
He said it amounts to a cover-up, “that’s why we need a public inquiry, to get to the truth of the matter finally.”
In the name of reconciliation, the University of Toronto has launched a tuition-free initiative.
Shannon Simpson, senior director in the Office of Indigenous Initiatives at the University of Toronto, said there’s been a lot of conversations over the years, but they really wanted to do something concrete.
“I think this has been one of those real concrete actions to really show something significant.”
She said although it was just launched last week, there are already 50 participants.
The program is offered to students from nine First Nations in southern Ontario, including, Alderville First Nation, Alderville, Curve Lake, Hiawatha, Huron-Wendat, Mississauga First Nation, Mississaugas of the Credit, Mississaugas of Scugog Island, the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte (Tyendinaga Mohawk), Six Nations of the Grand River.
Simpson said the response has been overwhelming.
“I really think that once we get this first year under our belt and see how things go, I really hope that we can expand it to include some other communities,” she said.
