Liberal leadership hopeful Michael Coteau is pledging to reinstate Ontario’s basic income pilot project, which the Ford government cancelled after promising to keep it during the 2018 election campaign.

Coteau, the MPP for Don Valley East, was involved in the pilot project as a cabinet minister in the Wynne government, and said the three-year study put Ontario “ahead of the game” on strategies to offset the effects of poverty.

“It was a shame to cancel that research that was being conducted,” Coteau said in an interview Thursday. “Everything is changing so drastically around us that understanding the basic income and being ahead of the game of other jurisdictions in understanding the concept of basic income and how it’s being used to mitigate some of the disruption that may occur with the change in economy” is important work.

He said it was a way to find savings “in the long term by putting the money in the hands of people versus systems. I was a big supporter of it and, if I was elected premier of Ontario, I would reinstate that project and expand it for research purposes.”

The Liberal government began the pilot project almost three years ago with 4,000 participants in Hamilton/Brantford, Lindsay and Thunder Bay. It provided them with up to $17,000 a year per individual or up to $24,000 for couples, less 50 per cent of any income earned.

The study was intended to examine whether having a higher, stable income would improve health, housing and employment situations, and to look at whether instituting a basic income was a more streamlined way to deliver social assistance.

In the run-up to Ontario’s 2018 election, an official with Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford’s campaign told the Star’s Laurie Monsebraaten that a PC government would see the project through to completion.

However, shortly after they took power, the Conservatives announced that the project would be wound in March 2019, a year before its scheduled end date. At the time, then community and social services minister Lisa MacLeod said the program was too costly and discouraged recipients from seeking employment.

“We have a broken social service system. A research project that helps less than 4,000 people is not the answer and provides no hope to the nearly 2 million Ontarians who are trapped in the cycle of poverty,” she said of the $50-million-a-year program.

MacLeod said continuing the pilot project was not formally a part of the Tories’ campaign, and would cost taxpayers an unaffordable $17 billion if it had been expanded across the province.

On Thursday, a spokesperson for Children, Community and Social Services Minister Todd Smith said the Ford government “is focused on lifting people out of poverty and providing them with paths to employment.”

Christine Wood said that “under 15 years of the previous Liberal government, the number of Ontarians forced to go on social assistance skyrocketed by 55 per cent. We cannot return to uncosted and unsustainable programs that trap our neighbours in a cycle of poverty.”

The pilot project’s cancellation caused an outcry around the world, with researchers saying it breached ethics of handling social experiments involving humans, and 100 Canadian CEOs urging Ford to reconsider.

At the time, former Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne called the move a “betrayal” of a Conservative campaign promise.

Since then, court challenges have been launched, including a class-action lawsuit that accuses the government of breaching a contract with participants and causing them undue stress and anxiety.

Former Conservative senator Hugh Segal, who helped the Liberals design the pilot project, was also critical of the Ford government’s move, saying he felt badly “for the people who signed up in good faith.”

Coteau worked with Segal on poverty reduction initiatives.

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“I had a very close relationship with the basic income pilot over the last few years,” Coteau said. “It’s a huge lost opportunity. Not only were Canadians looking at us, but other jurisdictions around the world were looking at Ontario for some of the answers.”

Coteau’s leadership platform also includes a commitment to work with the federal government on a national pharmacare plan, lowering the voting age, free public transit and raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

The Ontario Liberal party will choose a new leader in March. Also running are former minister Steven Del Duca, current MPP and former cabinet minister Mitzie Hunter (Scarborough Guildwood), Kate Graham, Alvin Tedjo and Brenda Hollingsworth.

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