While I know that it's a controversial issue, I think it still bears consideration.
One of the largest stressors that come for people being productive and for people who are trying to achieve employment.... I'd like to sort of quote MLA Alana Delong. She and I worked for quite some time on the low-income review committee. She said that they found that the best way for people to come off the system was to slowly, slowly come back and to have as few bumps as possible. I think she's very accurate in that. Having a guaranteed annual income for every citizen would mean that people are not stressing that they are going to lose every single benefit they have. A lot of things happen. For example, if someone is sick and still wants attachment to the workforce, if that person reduces work hours with the employer, what immediately happens is that if he or she then has to go on long-term disability, the full-time employment the person started out with is lost. He or she will lose that full-time benefit, and the long-term disability carrier will only pay the reduced rate.
That's one obstacle right there. People work until there's nothing left. They stay longer when they maybe should have been on disability or maybe should have been on reduced hours. Then we have a situation where people can't move in the system because they're going to lose their medical benefits, they're going to lose their extended medical benefits that provide for other disability support, or they're going to lose the job itself. That also poses other problems.
If there was a guaranteed annual income, people would feel safer because they would not lose that base. I think we'd see a whole lot of creativity and different things happening.