Prior to receiving basic income, Steve Pelland was homeless and found it extremely difficult to find a job because most of the available jobs are late shift, but the homeless shelter doesn’t allow day sleeping. With basic income, he was not only able to afford housing, but he was also able to begin learning a trade to eventually get a middle class job. If the basic income experiment is not saved, he will certainly not be able to continue learning a trade, and will most likely end up homeless again.

Is that what Ford supports? Would Ford prefer his constituents stay homeless and unemployed instead of housed and paying taxes on middle class incomes?

Prior to receiving basic income, Roland Singleton had been homeless amidst dried up construction work. With basic income, Roland was able to afford housing and also enrollment into a two-year college electrician program. If the basic income experiment is not saved, he’s one of the lucky few who will likely be okay because his basic income made such a big difference so quickly.

How can Ford not support this outcome? Would Ford prefer that his constituents be unable to become skillfully employed and instead live on the streets looking for work where they can find it?

Prior to receiving basic income, Luis and Leanna Segura were small business owners with four kids. Creating a new business while balancing a family together was a real challenge. With basic income, the stress of covering bills at home was lifted, enabling them to grow their business with less worry. They also noticed an uptick in customers and what customers were spending due to their customers also being part of the basic income experiment and having more money to spend. If the basic income experiment is not saved, their business is more likely to fail instead of expanding to new locations.

Is that what Ford supports? Would Ford prefer the small businesses of his constituents fail? Does Ford prefer an Ontario with fewer customers with less money to spend into their local economies?

Prior to receiving basic income, Jessie Golem had four different jobs and even squeezed in freelance work between them in the never-ending battle to afford rent. With basic income, Jessie was finally able to take a deep breath, and with tears of joy streaming down her face, feel security for the first time. She gained the freedom to begin focusing on developing her role at a non-profit that’s helping grow grassroots organizations all over the world. If the basic income experiment is not saved, the exhaustion of daily survival will be placed back on her shoulders, and her newfound sense of security destroyed.

Is that what Ford supports? Would Ford prefer his constituents work four jobs just to get by, and live day after day with the weight of survival on their shoulders, unable to focus on the potential to positively impact our entire world?

It’s not too late for Ford to reverse his course reversal. He now has until the end of March 2019. He obviously made his decision to cancel the basic income experiment without looking at any of the available evidence, because the only data gathered was data to create the baseline. Nor did he sit down with any of the basic income recipients with the intention of gaining at least some understanding of how the experiment was working or even not working for them. But since his decision, an increasing number of personal stories have been shared of just how well the experiment was indeed working for the participants. There’s no excuse now for going ahead with this decision in light of all the positive stories available to listen to and learn from.

In fact, Jessie Golem — one of the above-mentioned basic income recipients — is now using her basic income to collect and share these many stories as part of an ongoing photography project she has begun. The project is called Humans of Basic Income (@HumansBasic on Twitter) and you’ve actually been looking at the photos while reading this. Jessie has also begun touring each of the basic income pilot areas to meet more of her fellow basic income recipients who want to visually share their stories. Stories like this one of a mother who was able to keep her baby daughter because of basic income…

Basic income allowed me a chance to recover my future. UBI gave me hope to provide a secure and better future for my baby girl. It gave me the confidence to “keep” my baby, rather than being forced to give her up for adoption. My family felt relieved to know my daughter and I would have a fighting chance, as a single mother. UBI significantly reduced my depression, anxiety, and OCD, which allowed a secure attachment to flourish between me and my baby girl. I was able to be a better, more attentive mom; I focused on my baby’s needs rather than ruminate about my own unmet needs. As a result, my baby is a well adjusted, healthy, happy girl. UBI is FOR CHILDREN!! UBI gave me the confidence and INCENTIVE to apply for a good job, knowing I had a safety net to catch me if I didn’t get the job. UBI cut out my need to use the food bank — I could afford to eat “real food.” UBI allowed me to save up for a down payment on a home.

Basic income gave a basic income recipient the confidence to keep her baby. Stop for a moment and think about that. A mother was able to afford to keep her child because of the basic income pilot. The effects of it are that big, as are the effects of not having basic income.

Jessie’s project is also not the only way of learning what was happening in the basic income pilot from those taking part in it. A blog has been setup for basic income recipients to share their stories of how their lives have changed as a result of it. The blog is called Basic Income Voices and I encourage everyone reading this to read those stories too, to learn for yourself directly from recipients what Doug Ford and Lisa MacLeod refuse to acknowledge, that basic income demonstrably works, and in thousands of ways no bureaucratic system of gatekeepers and string-pullers ever could.

The Ford administration would instead like everyone to believe that the basic income experiment is too expensive.This all too common notion is wrong-headed. It doesn’t look at the effects of basic income, effects which the experiment was built to measure. From the firsthand accounts of basic income recipients, we know many were for the first time enabled to find housing, to find employment, to find better jobs, to pursue their educations, to improve their skills, to eat better, to live with less stress, to build their businesses, and to spend their money into their local economies. It is abundantly clear from all of this that tax revenue would have likely increased and spending on the costs of poverty like health care and crime would have likely decreased.