Universal basic income in Canada

Specifically, the white paper[3] stated: An overall guaranteed income program...worthy of consideration must offer a substantial level of benefit to people who are normally in the labour market.

[4] In order to determine real-life responses to NIT implementation, the US government undertook four income maintenance experiments; they transpired in New Jersey and Pennsylvania (1968–1972), rural areas of North Carolina and Iowa (1970–1972), Seattle and Denver (1970–1978), and Gary Indiana (1971–1974).

Three major objectives of these interventions were to measure the labour supply response of NIT recipients, understand the effect of varying the base guarantee level and tax rate, and to make a better estimate of the cost of implementing such a program.

Importantly, the city of Dauphin served as a saturation site, since all 10,000 community members were eligible to participate (the elderly and disabled were exempt from the four American NIT experiments); four foci of Mincome were an economic arm (examining labour response), a sociologic research division (examining the family formation and community cohesion), an administrative programme, and a statistical division.

The inflationary price increases of the 1970s, coupled with a larger than anticipated unemployment rate, meant that the proportion of the total going to programme expenses exceeded estimates and was not under the control of the researchers.

(p. 44)Ultimately the Dauphin data which was collected at great expense to the taxpayers and time from participants (in the first social experiment ever conducted in Canada) remains largely unexamined.

(p.25)Doreen Henderson, a stay at home mother whose husband worked as a janitor also appreciated the benefits of NIT;[6] she said: Give them enough money to raise their kids.

As such, the authors contend that wives' labour involvement was marginal and when faced with competing tasks of looking after the household and raising children, the additional income provided by NIT was sufficient to justify an exit from the labor market.

However, this phenomenon was predominantly observed in Caucasian wives whereas African American and Hispanic women exhibited a small increase in labor force participation.

A potential explanation is that the additional income from government assistance meant that young adults could stay in school as opposed to joining the workforce in order to support their families.

[13] In November 2013, a poll commissioned by the Trudeau Foundation found that 46% of Canadians favoured and 42% opposed replacing current economic assistance with a guaranteed national income.

Although the incoming Progressive Conservative government had promised to maintain the three-year pilot program, its cancellation was announced in August 2018, 10 months after the previous Liberal administration started distributing payments.

[18][19] Minister of Children and Youth Services Lisa MacLeod said the decision was taken due to high costs, and because ministry staff indicated that "the program didn't help people become 'independent contributors' to the economy.

[22] Journalistic reports tended to focus on non-entrepreneurial participant outcomes contributing to personal stability, such as augmenting disability payments, paying for education and student loans, purchasing new eyeglasses while remaining in a low-paid museum job, paying for transportation costs (such as bus fare to work rather than walking for an hour and a half), and purchasing necessary items as fresh produce, hospital parking passes, "winter clothes they couldn't [previously] afford and staying warm", etc.

[24] In contrast, from the viewpoint of the current government, this basic income pilot program is considered an ineffective use of resources, because the first priority for addressing poverty needs to be getting all residents off of welfare rolls and into employment, not providing assistance to people who are already working.

Ending the study early will make it difficult to gather conclusive data regarding the research goal of determining "what happens when low-wage, precarious workers receive a financial top-up.

This allows heads of a family unit to use their financial resources as they best see fit rather than being constrained by the traditional income assistance programs, which typically have means tests, time limits and other restrictions.

It is usually favored by those who see the GAI as a right of citizenship and whose belief in the goal of decreasing poverty through providing the basic income and more equally sharing the economic benefits of society.

As part of a traditional welfare system, individuals receiving assistance would be taxed at a rate of 100% (demonstrated in the line connecting 'C' and 'D') and as such the net income level is unchanged.