Senator Hugh Segal... you're all right...

This week the progressive blogosphere exploded over the CPC Senate hypocrisy on bill C-311. Too many of us sat and watched Senate leader Marjory LeBreton, who was as giddy as a schoolgirl, snicker and smirk her way through interviews as she justified throwing out her responsibility to act as "sober second thought" to Canadians. But believe it or not - not all CPC Senators are hypocritical snakes in the grass. I know, I know. Hear me out folks.

The front page of today's Globe and Mail explores the idea of guaranteed income for low-income Canadians. The headline is absolutely atrocious: "To end poverty, guarantee everyone in Canada $20,000 a year. But are you willing to trust the poor?" If the point of the article was to debunk the myth that all Canadians in poverty are able-bodied, 20-somethings who thought it was better to stay home and play X-Box than finish high school and get a job - then the G&M didn't do a very good job. The article did feature a young single Canadian mother who had, despite many challenges, got a professional diploma in a growing field but because of the recession was not able to keep employment. However, I suspect the G&M chose that title because underlying the idea of guaranteed income, is the view of many "pick myself up by my bootstraps" Canadians who think that the poor and homeless are lazy and if you give them money they'll just abuse the system. And then who is left holding the bill? ME/US!

But one figure stood out. And that was CPC Senator Hugh Segal who didn't shake down the arguments with "real Canadians work for their money" but came to the issue with a refreshing approach for a conservative.

Senator Hugh Segal, one of the more vocal proponents of no-strings-attached aid for the poor, points out that the guaranteed-income program for seniors has greatly reduced poverty, especially among women.

“There's a bias that when given the chance people will be lazy,” he says. “That's not my sense of reality.”

Mr. Segal argues that giving money with no conditions removes the stigma and shame around poverty, allowing people to focus instead on how to improve their lot.

Requiring the poor to prove continually that they are deserving of assistance or threatening to pull help away without notice only discourages the risk-taking and confidence required to get out of poverty.

“It's dehumanizing,” Mr. Segal says. “Think of a mother having to negotiate though Plexiglas for enough money to feed her family.”

Or the mom who goes back to school to improve her prospects and loses her welfare payments because she is not seeking jobs.

It also costs people their privacy. Candace Witkowskyj, a legal advocate for welfare recipients in British Columbia, tells stories of people forced to take pictures of the contents of their drawers to prove that they lived alone or to get a doctor's note to justify a $20 emergency food voucher.

“If you think of the core premise of charity, it is not to treat people as lesser,” Mr. Segal says. “[It] is to give people a leg-up so they can have some measure of independence and can make some of their own choices.”

To do that effectively, he argues, we need to let them decide the steps they take to get there. Or – as Ms. Gray in Victoria puts it, saying she would go back to school for more training if she could count on covering rent and daycare – give some autonomy back to “people who are trying to be somebody in this world.”

A few weeks ago I blogged that there wasn't a progressive conservative left on the Hill. I may have to think twice about what I typed.

For once a conservative is arguing for more "freedom" and "liberty" for a population of the country and I can say with them, "Amen!" Of course, if you made above a certain % a year you would not qualify for guaranteed income, so it is not as if I would be able to imagine another 20G's in my pockets and what I would do with it. And even if it did come to me, I'll tell you where it would go: university debt. And after that? I'd put the remaining 3/4 into savings and with the rest I would pad my monthly allowance. And while that's good for me, it's not really the best thing for the economy.

The idea of this guaranteed income is that it is being spent back into the economy. Through rent, heating, electricity, food, clothing, transit tickets, daycare, school supplies, etc. It's not going into a bank account where it isn't touched for another 20 years. And what many opponents do not realize is that this money is going straight back into the economy and generating new jobs whether or not those getting GI are picking them up. Someone is! And that's good for the economy. To be sure, our current welfare system does do that. But not to the same extent and whatever is pumped back into the economy is surely eaten up by the bureaucratic costs that are spent implementing the system.

Hugh Segal is on the right track. Now he is a Senator who I could vote for (maybe). I have some reservations with what he thinks is best for CIDA and DFAIT. But on this issue, I wholeheartedly agree. And progressives should back him up.