I focused on basic income because one of the words that jumped out to me when you were asking us to appear was for us to talk about the “basic working conditions”. The word “basic” is actually pretty critical. One other area that I did not have time to get into and is not necessarily a federal area is the area of housing as well, and the issues around housing.
When we talk about basic needs, we are talking about, as I said, the reference to stating your income in terms of monthly income, which comes from a long study that has been done and which I've read, with interviews of 200 artists, artists who are not the celebrity artists. They are the ones who are really trying to make it on the bare minimum.
Housing is the issue. Income is the issue. Also, it's housing as it relates to not just where they live, but where they do their work, the studios in which they need to work, with the equipment they need to have. When I was at the Banff Centre, one of the things we did to encourage a residency was that instead of paying for the residency in their home, we paid for them to rent equipment so they could do the work they needed to do.
These basic needs, the infrastructure, are really what's at stake right now.