The thing people ask a lot when they're asking me this question is, what model do you think is best? Is the one they're testing in Scotland right now the best? Is the one they're doing in the Dutch city of Utrecht the best? Is the one in Barcelona the best? Is the one in Ontario the best?
I say, no, none of them is going to be the best for Canada. We don't think we have all of it figured out in terms of the way it should actually play out. What we do think we have is the idea that it needs to be universal. This means that everybody needs to at least be eligible for the benefit. That means that it could look different for different people in different provinces, or with different abilities, or all sorts of different things.
The analogy I like to use for it is our health care system, which is universal. We're all okay with the fact that not everyone is going to need a heart transplant, or not everyone is going to need chemotherapy, but we accept that the benefit to the people who are lucky enough to not need that kind of care is that they know it's there for them if they need it.
The way we're running income support programs in Canada right now would be equivalent to your needing to prove to your doctor, with documents over the past month, that you have cancer. “Here, Doctor, I tested my blood this many times, and I have cancer. Please treat me.” We need to move income support. The program we are proposing, a universal-based income guarantee, would be the same thing for income support as what we already have for health care in Canada.
How's that?