Thank you for opening the July OBIN Newsletter. Again, we have tried to highlight the different areas your coordinating group has been working on and to keep you informed. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you have questions or need some help with a locally planned activity. We are here for you.
*** Breaking News ... The Case for Basic Income and the Arts team is releasing their Public Letter to the Prime Minister tomorrow, 16 July 2020 and The Case for Basic Income and Small Businesses published their report, The Future of Small Business Enterprises in Canada today, 15 July 2020. See below for more details and links.
Facilitator's Corner
Many of us are catching our breath and beginning to emerge from our isolation and even taking a few days of holiday. Well-deserved and needed! However, this is also the time we should be reaching out to our communities. It is an ideal time to discuss with them that for many, life would have been much less stressful had a Guaranteed Basic Income already been in place. As you are aware, the media has been providing a great deal of support that we should continue to build upon.
As per the Goals and Objectives, we agreed to attempt to make contact with at least 1,000 people this fiscal year, which happens to end in September. If we are to convince our governments that we really care, one indication they will be looking for is numbers. Unfortunately, last month we had only 5 new people join OBIN. How about a contest to see who can add the most people to our website this month ?!
Through collaboration with BICN and Coalition Canada, the OBIN Coordinating Team has been very active. We have been less successful in reaching out to affiliates in Ontario. As has been mentioned before, we need more volunteers working with the Internal Relations team. OBIN’s focus IS Ontario. The good news is the creation of the Basic Income Youth Network (BICYN). While BICYN is national, OBIN is fortunate in having one of its members, Chloe Halpenny, provide a youth perspective on the C-Team as Youth Liaison.
Finally, it is the time of the year when we need to start thinking about next year and beyond. Everything is open to discussion, including new volunteers for the C-Team and the base upon which we plan our program, i.e. the Basis of Affiliation. We are planning to hold our Annual Meeting in the latter part of September. This time it will be a virtual meeting but that has the advantage of being easier for many more members from across the province to participate via Zoom. Watch for more details coming soon.
Warm wishes but no hugs yet,
Joe Foster
OBIN C-Team Facilitator
613 724 5910
Internal Relations
I want to apologize for not having this Newsletter out to you sooner. It seems that summer has finally hit Ontario and it has slowed things down. As mentioned by Joe, people are starting to take holidays and get out of strict shelter-in-place. We sincerely hope that you are able to take advantage of some time to enjoy a bit of an escape from the chaos that the pandemic has created.
I have been asked by a few people about joining others locally to form basic income groups. Unfortunately, our database has not been collecting locations for people who have signed up. This makes putting people together difficult. I will be working with the rest of the C-Team to try to gather that missing information from those who would like to take a more active role in the movement. More on that in the next Newsletter.
John Mills
OBIN Website News
OBIN now has 350 members most of whom signed up through our new NationBuilder website (some members’ data was imported from the old OBIN website). Our goal is to have 1,000 members by October 1st as part of our campaign to let our politicians know that Ontarians are interested in supporting a Basic Income Guarantee for those experiencing economic insecurity - a new normal for many individuals and families due to COVID-19 and an old normal for many others. Let your networks know about Basic Income in Ontario and invite them to become a member of the Ontario Basic Income Network.
To inform our members and others who stop by to visit our website, we post articles, opinion pieces and notices about Basic Income developments with a focus on Ontario news and BI groups in Ontario. Our Facebook page is also on top of breaking news and opinion pieces. To date, we have posted 52 articles in our website News section with links to various resources on our website.
OBIN is pleased to have recently released the first report in the Case for Basic Income series, Rethinking Work and Income Security in the 21st Century: The Case for Basic Income and Work. You can read and download the report here and visit the Case for Work page for other resources related to this topic. Many thanks to Barbara Boraks and her team of experts for coming together and sharing their knowledge with each other and producing this report, which is the first of several reports in the works. Look for The Case for Basic Income and The Arts Public Letter to the Prime Minister being released 16 July 2020. Please visit the Case for Women’s page and explore the many resources posted there. Also being released (today, 15 July 2020) is another report in the Case for Basic Income for Small Businesses, The Future of Small Business Enterprises in Canada. Read the report here.
Another area on the website to visit is the Videos section where we feature BI webinar replays, Basic Income videos featuring various BI advocates. In Ontario, we are lucky to have two Basic Income advocates, Saryn Caister and Jessie Golem, who host a weekly interview/discussion show, UBI Community Chat. Recent guests include Ken Yang, Content Manager of UBIWorks.ca (Episode #10), and Alvin Tedjo (Episode #6), a leadership candidate in the recent leadership race for the Liberal Party of Ontario who ran on a Basic Income platform.
New material is added frequently. Visit often. Share the link - obin.ca
Sharon Zoschke
Website Content Manager
Esoterica
Basic Income Week is coming up in September and now is a good time to start planning something locally. It can range from a march to meeting some friends on a socially distanced basis to talk about basic income. Please see basicincomeweek.org for more information.
Chloe Halpenny had an op-ed published in the Ottawa Citizen on the role of youth in the basic income movement:
The editorial board of the Hamilton Spectator had this to say about basic income:
https://www.thespec.com/opinion/editorials/2020/07/02/lets-make-the-new-normal-a-better-place.html
There is an informal international basic income forum that meets twice monthly. One of their working groups has launched a UBI Advocates survey to try to determine the effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic on the UBI Movement; Opinions of UBI Advocates. We would like to encourage you to take the survey below:
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www.obin.ca