Business Supports Guaranteed Annual Income

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The economists suggest two new federal programs: an earned income supplement for the working poor (in effect a wage subsidy for employers) and a refundable tax credit for the very poor.

What this means is that poor people would file tax returns even if they didn't owe any income tax, and the government would send them cheques. As such, it is a variation on the old guaranteed annual income scheme, an idea that at different times has had currency with both the left and the right.

Ideas, of course, are cheap. Old ideas are cheaper. But it's possible these old ideas may have some traction. They are being pitched not only by a big bank but a big bank working closely with the Canadian Labour Congress, anti-poverty groups and other large businesses.

The formal name of this unlikely coalition is the Task Force on Modernizing Income Security for Working Age Adults. It is self-appointed, financed in part by the Atkinson Charitable Foundation.

Still, no government may be able to completely dismiss something that has the imprimatur of the TD Bank, Noranda Inc., the CLC, the pro-business C.D. Howe Institute and the left-liberal Caledon Institute.

"It's been quite surprising," said task force co-chair Susan Pigott, the head of Toronto neighbourhood centre St. Christopher House. "If someone had told me eight months ago that the Toronto Dominion Bank was interested enough in poverty to write this, I would have said they were dreaming."

Nothing like scientific research from some of Canada's major business corporations to put an arrow through the heart of the howling tax cut lynch mobs, eh! This will be good news for a lot of low income and poor Canadians when it goes into effect.

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New directions for welfare system

Finally we are starting to get some enlightened leadership from some of the corporate community. Governments who ignore these kind of progressive proposals do so at their own risk.

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Some really interesting developments here mirror.

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Holy shite, we get the socialist agenda.

To start two 'different' threads based on the same article is quite apropos of the Federal NDs.

A barren policy cupboard, so they recycle the same things over and over.

Little Jackie's season in the son has come and gone. I figure they are maybe 50/50 to retain party status next time around.