Butler-Jones – program example

In welfare, if you make above a certain income, you lose your benefits. One of the best things we did is Saskatchewan, well not me personally, but what the government of Saskatchewan did in the 90’s was for health was to provide dental and pharmacy benefits to low income families so you could come off welfare and not lost these benefits for your kids. The result being all kinds of people now working and when you actually study it you find that they’re happier, they’re healthier, they’re not engaged. It’s not surprise they’re now engaged.  

Most people would prefer to work but to make a rational decision, would you actually, you know, as much as you want to work, you go to work, you don’t make much more money, but you lose these benefits and these risks you increase for your kids. So if you remove that rational decision, then you find more people are actually in the workplace, then you see all the mental health, physical health, and other benefits as a result of that. 

It’s striking how simple these things are at one level and yet how complex they are because at this point, no other jurisdiction in Canada has implemented that in the same way in spite of the evidence. 

Another example, from Saskatchewan actually, is related to connectivity in terms of if you’re on social assistance you have a phone, but if somebody runs up a long distance bill that you can’t pay you lose your phone, but you can put a long distance cap on, but at the time it was a $200 deposit. Well what was negotiated was for those on social assistance you remove the $200 deposit which they don’t have so they can have basically free local calls and people can call in, but you don’t have the risk of someone calling Hong King, running up the bill that you can’t pay. 

So then what happened is thousands of phones; thousands of households with phones that didn’t have them previously. Just imagine the, you know not just in terms of the individual and their sense of connectivity to others but also even for caregivers, for social workers, and teachers and others to actually connect with the family. Simple thing, not a costly thing, but again, not something that’s being universally adapted.