Office of the Parliamentary Budget Office
The PBO report, based on previous work by BICN’s Pasma and Regehr (2019) work in Policy Options, takes into consideration post-COVID economical data such as projections of declining income and employment figures. It also models 3 different clawback rates, making it an interesting extension of previously done work.
Yves Giroux was appointed Parliamentary Budget Officer on September 4, 2018.Mr. Giroux entered the federal public service in 1995. Over the course of his 23-year career, he assumed progressively senior level positions and increased responsibilities, joining the executive ranks in 2003. Mr. Giroux has in-depth tax, fiscal and financial, and social policy knowledge and expertise, and considerable experience with stakeholder relations, and the management of large teams and multi-million dollar budgets.
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This report responds to a request from Senator Yuen Pau Woo to estimate the post-COVID cost of a guaranteed basic income (GBI) program, using parameters set out in Ontario’s basic income pilot project. PBO presents three estimates based on scenarios that phase-out the benefit by $0.50, $0.25 and $0.15 for each dollar of employment income for the last six months of 2020-21. Also, this report considers the provincial breakdown of the GBI cost. The total estimated gross cost of the defined GBI would range between $47.5 billion and $98.1 billion based on the three scenarios for the six-month period from October 2020 to March 2021. In addition, the report provides an estimate of the federal and provincial programs for low-income individuals and families, including many non-refundable and refundable tax credits that could be replaced by the GBI program. PBO estimates the potential offsets from repealing these measures would be just over $15 billion for the same period.
check also Policy Options of Basic Income Canada Network to see how we can pay for it.
