A long-standing idea of a guaranteed minimum annual income for Canadians is moving a small step closer to reality this week.
Former Conservative senator Hugh Segal delivers a report this week on how the "basic income pilot" announced in Ontario's February budget might work.
The Ontario government earmarked $25 million this fiscal year to establish a pilot project in the province sometime before next April, and appointed Segal in late June as an unpaid special adviser.
Segal, long an anti-poverty advocate, says any pilot project in Ontario must be in place for at least three years to be able to measure impacts effectively.
He also suggests two types of pilots could be tested, one in a small community to gauge its effect on the entire population, the other in one part of a larger community to compare its effect against the experience of the rest of the local population.
The Wynne government has indicated the pilot will neither eliminate nor consolidate existing poverty-reduction programs, but rather be designed as a top-up to such programs to lift its voluntary participants above the poverty line.
Quebec, Alberta and Prince Edward Island in recent years have raised the possibility of minimum-income pilots. And the federals Liberals at their Winnipeg convention in late May passed a resolution making the concept party policy.
