Human Resources committee  That's right, but let me be clear: I don't have a bias about how we get there. If we get there by taking the 65-year-old number, reducing it to 64, and then 63, and then 62 in affordable bites, I'm not troubled by that.

Human Resources committee  We've done that with other programs over time.

Human Resources committee  As my late mother used to say, “from your mouth to God's ears”.

Human Resources committee  Your question reveals precisely why we want a green paper to look at the options and the implications. Let me be clear: there was no consensus on the committee that we should move to a guaranteed annual income. The consensus was that we should have a green paper on how it might work in comparison with the other programs now in place.

Human Resources committee  In Dauphin, Manitoba, when they brought in the Mincome experiment in 1975, those rural families were told that if they didn't reach a certain level of income, they'd be eligible for a top-up. It was jointly funded by the Province of Manitoba and the Government of Canada. What they found after the first five years was that dropouts began to reduce, people staying in education began to increase, hostel admissions went down, car accidents went down, arrests went down, in the surrounding and existing community.

Human Resources committee  The only caveat I would offer to the committee for their consideration is that the cost issues are defined by how the program is modelled and designed. For any parliamentary budget officer, even with the best of intentions and expertise, to answer the question, he would probably ask new questions about what your priorities are for how this program might work.

Human Resources committee  Let's take a look at a basic income approach. How would it work? If the federal government brought in a basic income, a guaranteed annual income supplement such as we have for seniors, if we just brought it down five years, from 65 to 60, then all those Canadians who filled out the part of a form that had their income at a certain level would get topped up, and they would not be living beneath the poverty line.

Human Resources committee  One of the areas where we saw it, of course, was in the abnormally high level of dropouts from poor families. Those kids don't finish high school. They don't get exposed to any kind of opportunity for any formal training on those life skills, which some schools do and some schools don't do.

Human Resources committee  Don't forget that this came out in December of last year. Our hope would be that the government would do a green paper that doesn't say, this is the path we're choosing, but merely says, here are some options that emerge from analysis of best practices, things that have failed, what other countries are doing on this issue.

Human Resources committee  If you're asking whether we did a detailed program evaluation around effectiveness for all these programs, we had neither the resources nor the capacity to do so, but it's a very fair question. I would say that an area where there was a strong conclusion that involves federal and provincial funds was the ineffectiveness of welfare, which is a multi-billion-dollar program--

Human Resources committee  --that has not enough strength to support, but just enough to entangle, and we think it's quite negative. That, in and of itself, if it were to be reformed appropriately, would produce a lot of funds for other activities, because both the provinces and the feds are implicated in welfare.

Human Resources committee  I was in favour of Mr. Harper's policy on the fiscal imbalance. It reflected for the first time a certain reality for all the provinces with respect to their tax base. One of our economists at Queen's University, Thomas Courchesne, said that a number of provinces are not seeking new powers but money to exercise their current powers under the existing constitution.

Human Resources committee  Well, let me quote one of my favourite economists from the University of Chicago, Milton Friedman, who once said about the American government that if you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara desert, we would have a sand shortage in five years.

Human Resources committee  So my general view is that if there's a way for the local authorities and the local not-for-profits to have the freedom to do what they want to do, that is the best option all the time. Let me make one reference to the Calgary Homeless Foundation. This is not run by government public officials.

Human Resources committee  I was one of the people who worked fervently to get the Meech Lake Accord passed. I even worked on getting the Charlottetown Accord passed; it was based on the principle of giving the provinces the fiscal capacity to fund their social instruments. That was a fundamental principle.