The guaranteed annual income has been studied for many years. The biggest problem is the cost. It's extremely expensive. It's very difficult to implement. We've looked at numbers in the past and it was.... You eliminate everything. You eliminate welfare, you eliminate EI, and any type of income support. Then you only have one payment through the fiscal system, the guaranteed annual income.
It doesn't work. The math never really works because it ends up being more expensive if you want to make a difference. You cannot eliminate poverty. You cannot have a guaranteed annual income that is high enough to bring all these people out of poverty. Then, of course, you have to watch the clawback rates. You don't want a clawback rate that is too steep because then it would have a huge impact on incentives to work.
It's a real puzzle. It's not an easy solution. I haven't seen a credible study yet that would show that it could work here in Canada.