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Photo by Nick Brancaccio / Windsor Star

The notion of a basic income came from a discussion paper commissioned by the government by former Conservative senator Hugh Segal, a longtime advocate of the concept.

Segal advocates streamlining current social service programs such as dental and health and provide recipients with a higher monthly amount.

Under Segal’s proposal a single person on Ontario Disability Pension, for example, would see their annual income rise from $13,536 to $22,989 and they would be responsible for more of their own expenses.

“The idea has actually been around for decades starting in the ’60s and ’70s, so basically the theory is that if people have a guaranteed amount of income for each year it will give them the security that they’ll be able to buy food, pay rent, all the essentials, and with that assurance they’ll be able to maybe participate a little better in society whether it’s training, looking for jobs, volunteering, maybe it will even have some positive health effects,” said Jaczek.

“People will have less stress and perhaps fewer visits to the emergency room and so on. So that’s the theory and we want to test it over three years and see the results.”

Photo by Nick Brancaccio / Windsor Star

The province is providing $25 million a year over three years for the pilot project, which would involve studying people who receive the higher benefit versus a control group who did not.

Jaczek hopes to have compiled all of the information from the sessions by next month and have the pilot ready to go in the spring. It would take place in three communities, one in Northern Ontario, one in southern Ontario, and one in a First Nations community.