Canada faces a choice: tinker at the margins of poverty and precarious work, or build a durable income floor that lets people plan, learn and contribute.
The choice should be clear: create a universal basic income (UBI) that enables all Canadians to thrive.
Specifically, Canada should create a standalone, CPP-style UBI investment fund that pays a universal monthly top-up of $2,600 to every resident from birth to death. It would be designed to strengthen retirement security, simplify welfare delivery and protect children’s futures.
Today, many Canadians must navigate a paternalistic and dehumanizing system that requires them to continually prove their poverty to receive assistance.
By moving to a universal model, Canada would eliminate this overhead for both individuals and the government, allowing caseworkers to focus on complex needs rather than emergency financial triage.
While the cost of a $2,600 monthly payment is significant, it would be lower than the cost of existing social security supports spread out across multiple programs.
For residents under 18, each monthly payment could be split — with 50 per cent going to the parent or guardian for immediate household needs, and 50 per cent credited to a locked personal start-up fund for the child.
This account would become accessible for post-secondary education, apprenticeships or a first-home down payment — giving every young person a tangible head start.
To seed the fund, the government could rely on one-time wealth transfers from public assets and revenue streams, such as a portion of corporate taxes or resource royalties.
Quebec would retain its jurisdictional freedom to receive the payment as a provincial top-up.
Elsewhere, major provincial income supports (such as Ontario Disability Support Program and Ontario Works) could be consolidated into this federal delivery stream. To ensure continuity, local offices and staff would be integrated into a federal framework.
While this shift would require careful constitutional negotiation regarding provincial workers, the goal would be to standardize benefits and reduce duplication while preserving the local knowledge of frontline staff.
This is not a leap into the unknown.
Canada has a history of successful UBI-style pilots, such as the Mincome project in Manitoba and the more recent Ontario Basic Income Pilot.
By creating a professionally managed UBI fund, Canada can shore up vulnerable Canadians and restore purchasing power.
It can reduce administrative complexity by replacing the current patchwork of social support programs.
And it can invest in the future — ensuring every child has a nest egg, every worker a reliable floor, and every retiree a meaningful top-up to their pension.
Where would the money come from, just for Ontario it would take all the provincial income (226 billion) and more than half the federal income another 273 of the 507 billion)
That would equal 499 billion, or 2600 monthly for the 16 million Ontarians.
Even assuming that the 8.3 million employed people in Ontario would pay back their 2600 monthly ubi payment, that still leaves 240 billion per year on payments needed… EI for the whole country is 20-25 billion/yr, 3.3 billion for Ontario works, ODSP is 6.3 billion, that still leaves more than a 200 billion shortfall.
If you hold off on ubi for the sub 18s that would drop the requirements by 100 billion. Still 100 billion short of possible as we are already in a budget deficit.
If you were to instead suggest something like $1500 per person, that would be more reasonable to get things started (cost wise), but wouldn’t be enough that a lot of people would quit their jobs to relax. That $1500 is a huge difference for those truly on the edge, and once implemented, and integrated with EI, CPP, OAS, Ontario works, ODSP etc, the amount could be increased gradually to something that resembles a comfortable living (which by the time it’s done won’t be 2600/no anymore), and money could be allocated to children as well.
This $1500 amount would be equivalent to a part time 20hr/wk job, and is enough that if you really needed to rent a place and pay for food you could… (800 to 1000/mo for rent and ~400/mo for food)
UBI is a great idea, but the money is going to eventually need to come from somewhere, and the future looks to be run by major companies that are using AI and robots to do the majority of the work. Those companies base where they establish themselves on what makes them the most money, so the real question becomes how can we foster those companies to come to and grow in Canada.
Sorry $1500 isn’t close to being comfortable. Also overall it would self fund .
The money would come from the same savings of removing duplication and provincial overlap (welfare) and from taxing AI companies that will be eliminating 40% of jobs in the next 10yrs.