Universal basic income in Canada refers to the debate and trials with basic income, negative income and related welfare systems in Canada. The debate goes back to the 1930s when the social credit movement had ideas around those lines. Two major basic income experiments have been conducted in Canada. Firstly the Mincome experiment in Manitoba 1974–1979, and secondly the Ontario Basic Income Pilot Project in 2017. The latter was intended to last for three years but only lasted a few months due to its subsequent cancellation by the then newly-elected Conservative government.
History
William Aberhart, Premier of Alberta, was inspired by Major C. H. Douglas Social Credit theory and tried to implement a basic income for Albertans during the 1930s. However, he was thwarted in his attempts by the Federal Government of the time.
In 1970, the Canadian Department of National Health and Welfare issued a white paper which both emphasized the ability of NIT to decrease poverty but at the potential expense of decreased work incentive. Specifically, the white paper stated:
Following this stance, the National Council of Welfare advocated in 1976 for the implementation of the guaranteed annual income in Canada.
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). These prospective large-scale field studies were truly remarkable due to their size and the fact that families were randomized to either an experimental arm (i.e., NIT) or control arm (usual tax practice). 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.
Mincome
In Canada, an analogous experiment called Mincome took place in Winnipeg and Dauphin, Manitoba, between 1974 and 1979. 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. Unfortunately, the ambitious project ran into significant budgetary problems early on and neither the newly elected Progressive Conservative government in Ottawa nor the Tory government in Manitoba felt strongly about providing further funding. As stated by Hum and Simpson:
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. However, some of the participant interviews were released and provide support for the efficacy of NIT. For instance, Amy Richardson, a mother of six whose husband was disabled said:
Doreen Henderson, a stay at home mother whose husband worked as a janitor also appreciated the benefits of NIT; she said: