Ontario's basic income pilot should test an array of locales and be administered by a non-governmental task force, says a report released Tuesday from the University of Toronto's Mowat Centre.

Hugh Segal, the Liberal government's special adviser on basic income, has handed in his discussion paper, which is now in the final stages of prep for public consultation. Though the timeline for the release of Segal's report is hazy, the Mowat Centre isn't wasting any time letting the powers that be know the ways it might design the basic income pilot, and has made 14 recommendations based on lessons learned from pilots of yore.

But first, a brief history lesson.

When the Ontario government said it intended to explore a guaranteed income project in the February budget, it was kind of riding the coattails of pilots past, including in Dauphin, Manitoba, in the 1970s, as well as in Seattle and Denver, New Jersey, and Gary, Indiana. (The University of Manitoba' Evelyn Forget, best known for her extensive research on Dauphin's "mincome" experiment, was the lead author for the Mowat Centre's report.) Lessons learned from those tests can help the Ontario government design its own.

Topping the list of recommendations is that the government swiftly establish a wholly independent task force that can run the basic income program beyond the political cycle, and lest any political actors be swayed by their "incentive structures."

As the Mowat Centre sees it, the task force would "act as an ambassador of non-governmental (research and community) perspectives; objectively report on pilot outcomes; sustain the project in the face of major political or bureaucratic shifts; and ensure the project remains aligned with its original design features and is not subsumed into other topical policy initiatives."

Further, Ontario must diversify its sample to reflect such a diverse population and disperse to many test towns, as opposed to just one. Otherwise, the Mowat Centre cautions that it would be logistically difficult and costly to isolate and then saturate the community.

"A dispersed design also allows researchers to test different payout levels and tax-back rates, since it is unlikely that participants would know one another," the report added.

There are two traditional forms that a basic income may take. One functions like a negative income tax or refundable tax credit that is tailored to an individual or family’s income – as your paycheque balloons, so diminishes your tax credit. The other form, what the Mowat Centre calls a “demogrant” provides a regular fixed payment to each person regardless of their income or employment status.

The former is the more likely rubric to be adopted by government, as the Mowat Centre notes a negative income tax generates less upfront budgetary pressure as it would cover less people, and not all of those people would be getting the full credit.

Further, the model for distributing a basic income, as the Mowat Centre would have it, should include certain basics, such as making payments at least once a month, and ensuring the mechanism is flexible enough to be able to respond to needs post-haste. As well, the report says predictability is important and a basic income scheme should be able to buffer the impact of a sudden change in the amount of money a person receives. Reporting requirements from recipients should also be made as easy as possible.

The report also makes an attempt to debunk the myth that those receiving income assistance will work less, noting that recipients sometimes work differently (think entrepreneurial endeavours), or pursue volunteer or "creative activities. These forms of work contribute to community well-being and Ontario’s pilot should attempt to measure the impact of basic income on non-market work of this type," the report adds.

Ontario already has income assistance programs like the Guaranteed Income Supplement for seniors or Ontario Works and the Ontario Disability Support Program, and the Mowat Centre would like to see basic income piloted apart from such existing framework and instead focus solely on income.

Asked two weeks ago, Community and Social Services Minister Helena Jaczek told QP Briefing Segal's paper offers up pilot program options that vary widely and wildly, including whether one or several towns should be tested out in order to diversify the sample size. Jaczek added that will be one of the questions posed to the public during consultation.

"Whatever we do, we need to make sure that it's going to give us evidence of change, you know, the positive change that we're looking for — things like improved health outcomes, greater educational attainment, say, for children in family units of social assistance recipients," she said at the time.

At the Liberal Party of Canada’s convention in Winnipeg this summer, delegates passed a resolution to work with the provinces to “develop a poverty reduction strategy aimed at providing a minimum guaranteed income” and pointed to Dauphin's mincome experiment. The logic, according to Grits nationwide, is that the “ever growing gap between the wealthy and the poor in Canada will lead to social unrest, increased crime rates and violence."

The Mowat Centre’s 14 recommendations are:

Think beyond the political cycle
Establish an independent task force to direct the design, implementation and evaluation of the pilot
Have an explicit exit strategy/reporting structure
Engage the community in a variety of ways
Pilot the distribution mechanism to ensure a user-friendly interface
Determine what level of income should be tested
Disperse the pilot in various locales to promote diversity of design
Focus on youth and seniors
“Don’t underestimate the data capacity of government”
Consider ethical issues
Consider collaboration with national databases, such as the Canadian Research Data Centre Network

To contact the reporter on this story:
snanji@qpbriefing.com
416-212-5789

Ontario needs a basic income task force, says U of T report

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