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Last, the offsetting savings from eliminating other programs can differ by orders of magnitude, depending on the proposal: some basic income models envisage it replacing only certain forms of social assistance, while in others it would subsume much of the current welfare state.

In the absence of consensus on each, the way has been clear for critics to produce some truly eye-popping estimates, ranging into the hundreds of billions of dollars, leading many to discredit the whole idea as impracticable at best, utopian at worst.

So the Parliamentary Budget Office has done us all a service by its recent attempt to estimate the cost of a basic income guarantee, if implemented nationwide, based on the most advanced proposal made to date in this country: Ontario’s Basic Income Pilot, a negative income tax-style program currently being tested in three communities in the province.

That might seem an answer to a question that hasn’t been asked (except by Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre, who requested the study). Ontario hasn’t even decided whether to implement it yet — who said anything about a national program?

But never mind. The results, speculative as they are, are intriguing. The PBO puts the cost of a nationwide rollout of the Ontario program, guaranteeing every adult of working age a minimum of $16,989 annually ($24,027 for couples), less 50 per cent of earned income — there’d also be a supplement of up to $6,000 for those with a disability — at $76.0 billion.