The New Reality about having to work 60 to 80 hours a week prior to receiving the provincial government basic income.“I felt very stuck and kind of trapped in this situation, where I just sort of had to keep on working in order to survive in the hopes that in the future it would get better,” she says.She said the basic income pilot allowed her to stop working at multiple dead-end jobs, and to start her own business instead. “I was actually finding that I was making more money than I was before, when I was cobbling together those jobs, and stressed and depressed.”Golem has now become a vocal advocate for basic income in Canada.Ottawa launched the CERB, which provided $2,000 a month to nearly nine million Canadians left jobless by the.