A year after Doug Ford broke his first election promise by axing the province’s basic income pilot project, the future remains uncertain for Ontarians struggling to make ends meet.

The three-year, $150-million experiment was studying whether unconditional cash payments are a better way to support vulnerable workers and improve health and education outcomes for people living in poverty, including those on social assistance.

With a sample size of 4,000 adults in three test sites — Hamilton-Brant, Thunder Bay and Lindsay — and another 2,000 acting as a control group, it was one of the largest and well-designed studies of its kind.

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At a time when Western democracies are grappling with rising populism, technological change and the growing gap between rich and poor, researchers and policy-makers around the world were eagerly awaiting the results.

But last July 31, barely a year after it began, the Ford government cancelled the initiative, claiming it was a waste of taxpayers’ money to study an idea the province could never afford. Now we will never know, as there will be no facts to get in the way of this argument.

A legal attempt to save the experiment failed last winter. But the government may still be on the hook to pay compensation and damages as a result of a class-action lawsuit launched on behalf of participants who signed up in good faith and whose lives were thrown into chaos when the province pulled the plug.

Instead, Ford’s “Government for the People” has launched a massive overhaul of social assistance that it suggested in April’s budget will save taxpayers $1 billion over the next three years.

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It has pledged to move more people on welfare into work through improved employment services and to reduce the reams of rules and regulations that have plagued the system for decades.

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But beyond chopping Ontario’s current $9.2-billion bill for social assistance by more than 10 per cent, the government has released few details on what changes are in store.

What we do know, however, is troubling. This year’s budget included no increases to Ontario’s miserly social assistance rates. And a plan to change the definition of disability for those seeking support under the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) threatens to force thousands of people with mental illness, HIV, multiple sclerosis and other episodic disabilities onto Ontario Works, a program with much lower benefits.

The province says a narrower definition is needed to align more closely with definitions used in federal income-support programs. But this makes no sense when Ottawa is broadening its understanding of disability to coincide with new federal accessibility legislation.

Although the Ford government has said the new definition — likely to be introduced in the fall — will apply to new applicants only, it is unclear if those currently relying on ODSP will be re-assessed under the old definition during periodic reviews, as promised. Such uncertainty is enough to make a healthy, able-bodied person ill. Todd Smith, Ontario’s new minister for children, community and social services, must allay those fears now.

The other change we are told is coming in December involves rules around the amount of money people on welfare can keep when they work before facing benefit claw-backs. The increase to $300 from $200 is helpful. But hiking the claw-back rate from 50 per cent to 75 per cent is hardly an incentive for people to find more work. It should be reversed.

According to the latest census, almost 2 million Ontarians are living in poverty, defined as an annual incomes of less than $22,133 for a single person or $44,266 for a household of four. Almost 1 million of them are living on social assistance. It is unfortunate the Ford government wiped out a research project that might have helped the province chart a more promising path forward.