Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Yukon. If he is pleased to see me here, I cannot tell him how happy I am to see him here, back again.
The premise of the guaranteed livable income was embraced once by Reverend Martin Luther King as the only true solution to poverty. It must apply to everyone. That is the way it works. Some people describe it as a negative income tax. The essence of it is that every single citizen receives an income from the government. It would replace quite a lot of other programs, and that is why it is a saving. For instance, it could replace welfare and employment insurance, and would be a phenomenal benefit for students in school.
It would be set at a level that would alleviate poverty in its extreme form but would not create a situation where someone did not want to work. In other words, it would not be a sufficient income to induce people to stay home.
What it would do is say to a woman who is a single mother that she should declare her income and that there would be no clawback, whereas the welfare system penalizes a single mother for going back to work or encourages an underground economy. People would keep earning money until they became a taxpayer. That is where it becomes a negative income tax. Higher-income earners of course would have all of their guaranteed livable income taxed back; lower-income earners could work their way out of poverty.