Federal Officials Were Developing a Partial Basic Income Proposal in 2020, Records Show

Government Files is The Canada Report's public-records analysis series examining government documents obtained through Canada's Access to Information (ATI) and provincial Freedom of Information (FOI) laws. These transparency laws allow members of the public to request internal government records from federal and provincial institutions. This article reviews documents released through those processes and summarizes what the records contain and what they show. While we strive for accuracy, this article represents an analysis and interpretation of the source material. For complete accuracy and full context, readers should review the original documents, which are available in full below.

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A briefing note sent to four federal cabinet ministers in July 2020 closes with a line that never made it into any public statement: a preliminary proposal for a partial basic income program was, at that moment, under development inside Employment and Social Development Canada. The memo, signed off at the deputy minister level, offered ministers a briefing on that proposal at their convenience. Publicly, the government's position throughout 2020 was that it was monitoring the research.

The disclosure comes from records released under Access to Information request A-2020-01366, which sought emails, briefing notes, minutes and text messages on the organisation, research, planned rollout and proposed dates for a guaranteed or universal basic income involving the Ministers of Employment and Social Development between September 16, 2018 and September 16, 2020. The package runs to roughly 400 pages and covers ministerial memos, a departmental research statement of work, correspondence from Prince Edward Island, and internal analysis of two Parliamentary Budget Officer costings.

What the Documents Show

The July 16, 2020 memorandum went to the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion, the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, the Minister of Labour and the Minister of Seniors. Its stated purpose was to walk ministers through the PBO's July 7 costing of a hypothetical basic income, prepared at the request of Senator Yuen Pau Woo. But the analysis section goes considerably further than a summary of someone else's arithmetic.

Departmental officials told ministers that while the costs of implementing a basic income would be substantial, they did not appear prohibitive when measured against the scale of the emergency spending Ottawa had already committed to that year. That is a notably warm internal read on a policy the government was not publicly entertaining. Officials also flagged that a partial basic income along the lines of Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend or Spain's new low-income benefit could be pursued as a federal-only initiative, sidestepping the provincial negotiations that make a full programme difficult — though they cautioned that provincial clawbacks would be a problem, as they had already proven to be with the Canada Emergency Response Benefit.

The PBO numbers themselves are stark. A basic income modelled on Ontario's cancelled pilot would cost $47.5 billion gross over six months from October 2020 to March 2021, reaching 9.6 million recipients at an average total benefit of $4,749. That figure assumes Ontario's phase-out rate of fifty cents clawed back per dollar of employment income. Loosening the phase-out to improve work incentives pushes the six-month gross cost as high as $98.1 billion. Officials noted that removing a range of federal and provincial tax credits for people aged 18 to 64 — the GST/HST Credit, the Canada Training Credit, the Canada Workers Benefit, the Disability Tax Credit, and the basic personal amounts — could offset roughly $46.3 billion of that.

The department's own caveat is the interesting part: officials wrote that the PBO's analysis measures cost and nothing else, ignoring possible reductions in hours worked, possible productivity gains from greater economic stability, changes in employer behaviour, and inflationary effects on purchasing power. They also warned that eliminating credits like the Disability Tax Credit and the Caregiver Credit carries risks the costing simply does not model.

How Officials Prepared a Minister to Say No

Dated September 16, 2020 — the final day of the request period — a separate memo prepared the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion for a meeting the following day with Senator Kim Pate, a longtime advocate for a guaranteed livable income. The note is unusually detailed for a single meeting: a biography of the senator, a compilation of her public statements on basic income, suggested speaking points, and a copy of the PBO memo attached for reference.

Much of the note is anticipatory. Officials predicted that Senator Pate would cite the PBO's 2018 estimate of a $44 billion net annual cost for a national basic income and advised the minister that the figure, while informative, should not be treated as definitive — the actual net cost would depend partly on eliminating programs and benefits that vulnerable populations rely on. They predicted she would link poverty to population health and crime rates, and countered that while the poverty-health relationship is well documented, evidence on how much a basic income would shift health outcomes or health care costs is limited.

The speaking points supplied to the minister follow a recognisable sequence. Acknowledge the senator's advocacy. Note the billions already spent since April 2020. Stress that income security is a shared responsibility with the provinces. Concede that a permanent basic income could contribute to tackling poverty by building on existing programmes with partial basic income features — the Canada Child Benefit, Old Age Security, the Guaranteed Income Supplement. Then pivot to the obstacles: significant cost, provincial negotiations, design complexity, and the observation that no country has launched a full-scale national basic income that could serve as a working model. Close by promising to continue monitoring research.

Nothing in the speaking points mentions the preliminary partial basic income proposal that the July memo said was under development within the department.

The Department Was Already Treating CERB as an Experiment

A statement of work circulated internally on June 10, 2020 by an analyst in ESDC's Policy Research Analysis and Geomatics Division proposed a research project comparing UBI-like programmes across the G7. The framing is direct: the CERB, it says, closely resembles a universal basic income of the kind policy commentators have long advocated for, governments have briefly piloted, and political shifts have repeatedly cancelled before results arrived.

The document argues that COVID-19 handed governments an opportunity to develop and test UBI-like programmes on the fly, producing what it calls a natural experiment in whether such interventions can support workers and economies during a crisis. It identifies the department's Employment Insurance Directorate and its Income Security and Social Development branch as the primary clients for the research. It also states plainly that traditional programmes like Employment Insurance are ill-equipped to handle mass unemployment caused by large-scale catastrophes, and that Canada's social safety net remains modelled on a full-time permanent employment relationship that no longer describes how many people work.

A related item in the package records that an ESDC analyst attended a July 9, 2020 webinar hosted by the Pearson Centre and the Basic Income Canada Network, then circulated a debrief to roughly two dozen colleagues. The debrief summarises the network's proposed model — $22,000 per individual and $31,000 per couple for those aged 18 to 64, a 40 per cent reduction rate on other income, a modelled cost of $134 billion offset by $136 billion in tax and transfer changes — without editorial comment.

Prince Edward Island Kept Asking

The records document a sustained provincial push that Ottawa never took up. PEI's legislature passed a motion in December 2016 urging the province to pursue a partnership with the federal government to establish a universal basic income pilot on the Island. The former provincial government wrote to then-minister Jean-Yves Duclos signalling interest in federal support. Liberal MP Wayne Easter wrote separately in support. In July 2019, the legislature voted to strike a special standing committee to report back within a year with recommendations on creating a basic income guarantee pilot for the province.

A briefing note prepared for a meeting with PEI's Minister of Social Development and Housing records the federal approach to these overtures: no response was sent to a 2019 request, a decision the note attributes to the proximity of the federal election. It also captures the province's argument for why it makes a good test site — Islanders span a wide spectrum of job types and incomes, public and private sector work, seasonal and year-round employment, rural and urban communities. A letter from PEI's minister included in the package makes the pitch explicitly, noting that a provincial Speech from the Throne had announced a secure income programme expected to benefit roughly 400 Islanders, and that the number could grow substantially with federal financial support.

PEI's own minister had already said the quiet part publicly. In the province's Question Period on June 28, 2019, he stated that the government remained committed to a basic income guarantee pilot but required financial support from Ottawa to make it happen.

What's Not in the Documents

The request asked for planned rollout details and proposed dates. The records contain neither. There is no implementation timeline, no target launch date, no cabinet decision, and no costed programme design beyond the PBO's hypothetical models. The preliminary partial basic income proposal referenced in the July 2020 memo is mentioned in a single sentence — the proposal itself is not in the release.

The request also covered text messages. None appear in the package. Portions of the records are withheld under sections 18(b), 19(1), 20(1)(b), 21(1)(a), 21(1)(b) and 23 of the Access to Information Act, covering economic interests of Canada, personal information, third-party commercial information, advice and recommendations to government, accounts of consultations and deliberations, and solicitor-client privilege. Section 21(1)(a) and (b) — the advice-and-deliberations exemptions — appear alongside the PEI correspondence, which is where a federal decision on the pilot request would most likely be documented.

The department's stated next step in both ministerial memos is identical and unchanging: officials continue to monitor research, analysis and media reporting on basic income and related subjects.

Why This Matters Now

Basic income has resurfaced repeatedly in Canadian politics since 2020, including through Senate bills and provincial pilot proposals. The records show that during the CERB period, the federal department responsible for income security was not merely observing the debate from a distance. It was scoping research that treated the CERB as a live UBI experiment, analysing costing scenarios in enough detail to conclude the price tag was not prohibitive relative to pandemic spending, identifying a federal-only partial basic income as a potentially viable route, and developing a preliminary proposal — while briefing ministers to tell advocates that the obstacles were substantial and the government was monitoring.

The records do not show that a basic income was ever close to adoption. They show something narrower and, arguably, more useful: what the department actually thought when it was not speaking publicly, and how far the internal analysis had progressed past the position ministers were given to deliver.

All documents and figures referenced are from Employment and Social Development Canada, request A-2020-01366, obtained through an Access to Information request. The release contains ministerial briefing notes, departmental research documents, internal correspondence and provincial letters concerning basic income between September 2018 and September 2020.