Sheila Regehr
Chairperson of the Basic Income Canada Network, a retired federal public servant and former Executive Director of the National Council of Welfare.

Bio:

Sheila Regehr is a founding member of the Basic Income Canada Network, and its Chairperson since 2014. She is also a former Executive Director of the National Council of Welfare, an independent advisory body to the federal government that published the only comparative reports available on Canada’s 13 different social assistance systems, comprehensive poverty profiles, and analytic reports focused on solutions. It consulted across the country with governments and civil society from 2006 to 2012 as provinces, territories and municipalities were developing and undertaking poverty reduction strategies. Its last and most in-demand report was The Dollars and Sense of Solving Poverty.

Sheila’s 29-year career in the federal public service also spanned front-line work, policy analysis and development and senior management.  She was a Canadian negotiator at several United Nations world conferences on gender equality and social development, and chaired UN negotiations on poverty and on unpaid work. Her areas of policy expertise include income security and taxation, such as child tax benefits, the tax treatment of child support, the development of Economic Gender Equality Indicators in collaboration with Statistics Canada, maternity/parental benefits, pensions and social assistance. Sheila’s insight also comes from experiencing poverty herself as a young parent.