Archbishop Shane Parker, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, has called on the federal government to implement a universal basic income (UBI) “in alignment with the living wage for all Canadians.”
A living wage is the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet basic needs such as food and housing, as distinct from the minimum wage, which is the lowest wage an employer can legally pay their employees.
In an open letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne published Dec. 4, the primate highlighted UBI research and advocacy in Canada and other countries that showed its “potential economic and social value.” He cited a pilot project in Ontario that showed improved physical and mental health as well as financial benefits to UBI recipients.
“Like other major faith and secular traditions, we respect the dignity of every human being and seek justice for all people,” Parker said. “Across Canada, members of the Anglican Church live out this calling by offering support and services to people struggling with a growing affordability crisis, including escalating housing insecurity and unprecedented increases in food bank usage.
“We believe a UBI would be a valuable initiative that would increase financial security and promote greater equity for all residents of Canada. It represents a positive nation-building policy for today and tomorrow and is consistent with the transformational agenda of your government. It has found support across party lines and in communities across this country. I pray you will make the implementation of a UBI a high priority.”
Parker said he welcomed any opportunity to meet and discuss the issue.
The primate told the Anglican Journal his call for a UBI reflected Resolution C004, one of a number of motions that were on the agenda for last summer’s General Synod but, for lack of time, were referred to the Council of the General Synod (CoGS) instead. CoGS subsequently voted in favour of the resolution at its November 2025 meeting. C004 directs the primate to write to the federal government to call for a UBI in line with the living wage.
He said the content of the letter was also informed by a similar letter 41 bishops from the Anglican Church of Canada and Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada sent in 2020 to the then prime minister, deputy prime minister and finance minister. The earlier letter called on Canada to implement a guaranteed basic income (GBI), citing other programs such as the Canada Emergency Response Benefit that the government launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
UBI means that everyone in a society, regardless of wealth or income, receives a monthly cheque for the same amount of money. At the end of each year, the government redresses the balance through the tax system and takes back the extra money from higher income earners who didn’t end up needing the UBI. By comparison, GBI is an income-based system, in which monthly payments only go to individuals and families with lower income.
UBI proponents cite successful experiments
Retired bishop Geoffrey Woodcroft, one of the key organizers of the 2020 letter, praised Parker’s letter and its reference to the Ontario Basic Income Pilot Project, which provided GBI to 4,000 people in Ontario starting in October 2017. The project followed recommendations by Hugh Segal, chief of staff to two Progressive Conservative politicians, former Ontario premier Bill Davis and former prime minister Brian Mulroney. Implemented by a Liberal government, it was cancelled in August 2018 by the Progressive Conservative government of Doug Ford, with participants receiving their final payments in March 2019.
The Ontario pilot project, Woodcroft said, “showed a very positive effect … not only for recipients, but also for the community in which they live—because of course, if people get 2000 bucks, then they spend 2000 bucks, and typically in a local environment.”
It’s “absolutely the right territory to be in,” he said, since it shows Carney successes of GBI through what was originally a Progressive Conservative initiative—making it a “reasonably easy sell” politically, Woodcroft said.
Woodcroft also pointed to positive results from the Manitoba Basic Annual Income Experiment, or Mincome, in the 1970s, funded jointly by the provincial and federal governments. Young males who received the GBI, for example, used it to stay in high school longer instead of dropping out for low-wage jobs, leading to higher graduation rates and university enrollments.
Anglican scholar raises concerns
The Rev. Jane Barter, professor of religion and culture at the University of Winnipeg and an Anglican priest in the diocese of Rupert’s Land, co-wrote an article for the United Church of Canada magazine Broadview in response to the 2020 letter, criticizing UBI as an individualized policy solution that risked exacerbating inequality.
Speaking to the Anglican Journal, she said she had a similar response to Parker’s 2025 letter. Barter agreed with its premise, however, noting, “This is a period of incredible precarity economically. People cannot afford their groceries. People cannot afford their rent. They cannot afford to support their families.”
“From a socialist perspective, the problem with UBI is not the intention,” Barter said. “We appreciate the intention to put more money in the hands of workers and of people who are in need. It’s the architecture that’s the problem. By giving individuals cash to navigate a fundamentally unjust market, we risk strengthening the very actors who profit from scarcity, such as landlords, such as grocers, such as pharmaceutical companies and so on.”
Without effective rent control, Barter said, landlords would respond to implementation of a UBI by simply increasing rent.
“It becomes a subsidy to capital,” she said. “Without strong price controls … UBI can simply flow upward to those who own the essential goods.” She noted that many advocates of UBI “are not people of goodwill and faith like the primate, but they’re people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg … UBI becomes a tool for them to gain more control and more capture over our society.”
As an alternative, Barter favoured programs such as those that New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani campaigned on, including free public transit; subsidized and socialized housing with rent controls; strong public utilities and direct public employment. Barter also called for socialized childcare and tuition-free education.
In addition to emphasizing collective ownership rather than individual purchasing power, she said, such policies would be resistant to inflation, unlike UBI.
“The church does have a history of looking at socialist responses to these questions,” Barter said. “It has been a champion of Medicare. It did work for cooperatives.” She described church advocacy for UBI as adopting a “neoliberal frame” and “capitulating to the dominant voices within society,” representing in her view “a concerning drift to the right, rather than any kind of prophetic calling.”
Woodcroft said he did not think Barter was wrong or see her objections to UBI as criticisms. “I see them as exactly the type of outcome we want,” he said. “But what is actually doable right now makes more sense given the precarious nature of economics and politics in North America and indeed globally.”
Based on the studies of previous UBI programs, he said, many people “will be doing good things and will be out of harm’s way finally with basic income.”
In May 2025 Senator Kim Pate introduced Bill S-206, which would require the minister of finance to “develop a framework” to provide a GBI for anyone in Canada over the age of 17. Bill S-206 passed its second reading in the Senate on Nov. 6, with senators voting to send it back to the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance for further study.
