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“We know what the answers are,” Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi told a national “poverty reduction summit” recently, as if the solution was just sitting there waiting to be put into force. He’s hoping the new finance minister, Joe Ceci – a transplanted Ontarian who worked as a social worker before serving on Calgary city council for 15 years – will seize the opportunity. He’s willing to host a pilot program, along with Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson.

Good on them. Alberta would make the ideal venue for this test, since the left has all the momentum at the moment and public support is strong. If I works, great – poverty will be reduced, the hodgepodge of social programs that now predominates can be reduced or eliminated, other provinces can implement the process in other jurisdictions, and everyone goes home happy. If it fails, Alberta pays the price, the left finally learns a lesson about human nature and the results of giving away money, the theorists have to find someone else to experiment on, and the notion that everything can be solved via generous government programs is once again disproved.

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The idea of a “mincome” is old hat in Canada. In 2001 a pair of Manitoba professors, Derek Hum and Wayne Simpson, charted how – this being Canada – the first major test grew out of constitutional bickering and federal-provincial rivalries. Of course it would! Pierre Trudeau and Ed Schreyer, both keen on left-wing social theories, launched a joint program in Manitoba to test the thesis. The project set a minimum income level for all participants, provided by the government. If you lacked a job, you got to keep the whole thing. If you acquired one, the money was taxed back depending on how much you earned and the size of your family. The experiment eventually petered out without proving much of anything. A similar proposal was raised under the Mulroney government, but ignored. In 1994, the Liberals looked at it again, but Human Resources Minister Lloyd Axworthy concluded it was “not practical” and too expensive. Nonetheless, former prime minister Jean Chretien raised the possibility yet again in 2000 when he was contemplating retirement and wanted a legacy program “to leave his mark”. Even with surpluses piling up around him, however, he ultimately found a cheaper way to glorify himself.