Giving Compass' Take:

· Initially meant to last three years, Ontario plans to cut the basic income pilot program after just a year in action. Fast Company explains how the loss of this program, assisting low-income individuals with as much as $24,000 annually, has left thousands scrambling for a solution.

· Roughly 4,000 low-income residents were counting on this financial assistance. How will they handle this news? How will this loss affect them?

· Read more about universal basic incomes.

In April 2017, the government of Ontario began providing around 4,000 low-income residents of Thunder Bay, Hamilton, Lindsay, Brantford, and Brant County a basic income. The premise of the pilot, which was meant to last three years, was to understand the effects of equipping people living on little resources with an extra income stream. Under the program, a single person could receive up to $17,000 in Canadian dollars (minus half of whatever income they already earned), and a couple could receive up to $24,000. People with disabilities could get another $6,000 on top of other payments.

For people like Alana Baltzer, the basic income pilot was proving transformative. Her diet improved, and she applied to college and several jobs. Growing up in poverty, she said, she never saw a way out until Ontario introduced the program. For Baltzer, the extra stipend wasn’t a chance to sit back and do nothing–one of the common conservative critiques of basic income–but an opportunity to finally pursue a career and education that financial worries had prevented her from before.

But just a little less than halfway through the pilot, the government of Ontario is scrapping the program. In June, the province elected populist conservative businessman Doug Ford as its premier, and on July 31 he reneged on his pre-election promise not to cancel the program, and pulled the plug on a guaranteed support system that thousands had planned on receiving for at least another year and a half.

Read the full article about Ontario's basic income pilot by Eillie Anzilotti at Fast Company.