Article content continued

Being a replacement, rather than an additional program, is a critical feature of any serious GAI proposal. After all, the GAI’s main conceptual appeal largely rests on the potential to reduce government administrative costs by simplifying the income support system, which consists of numerous, often-overlapping programs at the federal, provincial and local government levels.

According to our calculations, the total cost of the income support system in Canada was $185 billion in 2013, or roughly 10 per cent of the economy. This figure includes spending and tax measures by all levels of government targeting people with low income, the disabled, the elderly, and parents with young children. A single program, providing an unconditional transfer, could do away with the administrative duplication and expensive monitoring apparatus that ensures recipients comply with all the different rules.

While proponents differ on what a GAI should replace, the wider the scope, the greater the potential for administrative savings.

In theory, the potential for administrative savings is substantial. A non-trivial portion of spending on income support currently goes to administration rather than directly on transfers to people. Who would argue against making government more efficient?

In practice, implementing a GAI that maintains its conceptual simplicity and produces administrative savings is unlikely to happen in Alberta — or anywhere else in Canada.