We made various requests to the Library of Parliament and other organizations in terms of the notional cost. Now of course how you design such a program will have a huge impact on the notional cost. As someone of the conservative persuasion, I'd be concerned about spending more than we are now spending in the social envelope. I think basic income done through a negative income tax would in fact be more efficient and take a lot of the middlemen out of the process. It would provide better support for those who need it more efficiently.
The number we have heard is anywhere between $25 billion and $32 billion in terms of a federal fiscal impact once the program was at full bore. But if you take what Senator Eggleton said earlier into account, namely, when you reduce poverty you reduce demand on the health care system, you reduce demand on the judicial system.... I have a crown attorney in my Senate district who will say to me that if there were no poor people in her county, she wouldn't have any business in terms of the youth diversion program she tries to run to keep kids out of prison. They all come from those kinds of families in deep financial difficulty. Plus you'd have the savings for welfare in the provinces. So in essence that's why we need to do a detailed costing paper, which is what our committee recommended.
You may find that a very modest seed investment at the outset will begin to produce a return on that investment. That actually indicates that we're no further behind in terms of total expenditure, but we're targeting it better. If you do it through the tax system, you protect people's privacy. You increase their compliance incentives and you do it in a fashion--as we now do with the GST tax credit--that is automatic. So you avoid all of the middle structures that are costly both to the provinces and to Service Canada--the federal government--and some municipalities.
We think it's workable, but we think you have to have a detailed costing so all the issues can be on the table. We should do it in a kind of open book approach, because that's the only way we can make progress.