Social Services Minister Lisa MacLeod used the word "compassionate" when outlining a plan to delay the death of Ontario's basic income pilot project until next March.

It's a word the new Progressive Conservative government should have front of mind when it designs its own overhaul of this province's welfare system.

A compassionate, efficient and effective remake of the current system would provide low-income and disabled citizens with enough money to pay for housing and a healthy diet, encourage education and skills training, allow them to keep a reasonable amount of extra income they earn and reduce administrative costs.

A basic income system might well tick all those boxes. The previous Liberal government wanted to find out so it began the now-doomed pilot project two years ago.

Four thousand people - half of them in Lindsay -collecting a maximum of nearly $17,000 for individuals and just over $24,000 for couples without having to go through the complex and less generous Ontario Works or Ontario Disability Support Program.

Meanwhile, researchers track a host of life changes for those recipients. How much training and schooling they attain, changes in health conditions and use of hospital and family doctor time, whether they are able to shop around for housing and many others.

Completing the three-year test would have shed light on whether changes were positive, negative or inconsequential.

MacLeod has said a research project that benefits only 4,000 people is not the answer when "nearly two million Ontarians ... are trapped in a cycle of poverty."

If she and her government have a better answer we would be happy to see it.

But the notion that a relatively small research effort is wasteful is wrong.

Research takes time and money but is necessary for good results. That's true in business, and at least as true for potentially massive changes to social programs that touch millions of lives and affect billions of dollars in spending.

The Ford government didn't just cancel a research project. It has declared that basic income is not the way forward, based on what appears to be a gut feeling.

At the same time, the federal Liberal government's successful poverty reduction strategy is moving in the direction of basic income.

The Canada Child Benefit is a simplified, tax-free amount that has made a big difference to low-income families since it was introduced in 2016. And it is a key element of the recently announced Liberal plan to reduce the number Canadians living in poverty by 50 per cent over a 15-year period.

Another existing element of the Liberal plan is the Guaranteed Income Supplement. It pays low-income seniors up to $18,000 a year tax-free and has been credited with dramatically slashing the number of seniors living in poverty.

Premier Ford might note that Ontario introduced the Guaranteed Annual Income Support program for seniors in the 1970s under Progressive Conservative premier Bill Davis. That became the model for the existing national system.

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Ontario had a chance to drive similar change through the basic income pilot. If evidence showed the system did work and the nation's largest province adopted it permanently a national framework likely would have followed.

It is now up to the Ford government to offer a different compassionate and effective solution for those two million Ontarians trapped in poverty.