Honourable senators, I would like to begin by congratulating my friend and former counterpart, Ontario’s former minister for the economy, on her maiden speech.

Esteemed colleagues, I rise today to speak to Bill S-206, An Act to develop a national framework for a guaranteed livable basic income.

For those of you who know me well, you’ll know that I’m not in the habit of speaking on a bill at second reading before it’s even been referred to a Senate committee. However, is that the case with this bill? The answer is no.

In the last session, I had the opportunity to thoroughly examine Bill S-233, Bill S-206’s predecessor.

The Standing Senate Committee on National Finance devoted four meetings to studying that bill, which is fairly typical for a public bill. As such, I believe I am now in a position to comment on the substance of this bill.

Let me begin by saying that Senator Pate’s intention is laudable. Like most of us here in the Senate, I too want to see our society’s poverty rate go down.

There are reasons to believe that direct cash transfers can, in some cases, serve as an effective solution to poverty. However, the evidence suggests that introducing a universal guaranteed basic income is not an effective remedy for poverty. Such programs can also be financially risky, depending on the terms and conditions.

Bill S-206 states that the program would be for anyone over the age of 17 and that there would be no requirement to participate in education or the labour market to qualify.

In an analysis published in February 2025, the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated the cost of such a project. Using the parameters of a pilot project conducted in Ontario in 2018, the PBO estimated the cost of such a program at $107 billion per year. What’s more, such a scenario would require a fundamental transformation of our tax system as well as tough negotiations with the provinces, which would see it as the federal government encroaching on their jurisdiction once again.

By way of information, the province of Quebec, my province, the all-time champion when it comes to social programs, studied a similar guaranteed minimum income project in 2017. What happened? The independent panel of economists, tax experts and sociologists recommended that the Quebec government reject the idea. Among the reasons cited were the complexity of such a reform, its prohibitive cost and the adverse effects on single-parent families, who are often the most in need.

Furthermore, a guaranteed minimum income system would also have a negative effect on labour force participation rates. The PBO came to the same conclusion. Fewer hours worked means less revenue for the government, making this already costly bill even less sustainable.

Our former colleague and distinguished economist, the Honourable Diane Bellemare, aptly summarized why a guaranteed basic income is not the right way forward. She said:

There are many solutions we can work on to eliminate poverty and inequality in Canada, but a GBI should not be one of them. It’s time we abandon this utopian dream for pragmatic, rigorously tested, targeted programs that will reduce and prevent poverty, provide skills and training and create an inclusive labour market.

Allow me to briefly share some thoughts on the place that non‑government bills like this one should occupy in the work of our institution. As you know, the number of public bills introduced in the Senate has increased significantly since the 2015 reform. This phenomenon is not without consequences. A growing portion of our time is devoted to studying these bills. In the last session, one in 10 subcommittee meetings was about public bills.

I would like to thank Senator Housakos for his recent speech in this chamber in which he shared the parameters that we should be using to determine whether to accept or reject Senate public bills at second reading. Senator Housakos, I don’t often do this, but I would like to commend you for that.

If you ask me, these are good criteria for determining whether a bill should be sent to committee or not. What are these criteria? First, they must not generate any expense for the government. Second, they should potentially be able to secure support here and in the other place.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but an election was held this spring, and I believe that priorities in the other place have changed. After 10 years of stagnant GDP per capita, more attention is being focused on creating wealth than on redistributing it.

In closing, allow me to remind you that the world is a different place now that Donald Trump is back in the White House. As millions of Canadians wait and wonder how big the federal deficit will be next week, I hate to think how much more worried Canadians would be if they found out that the Senate plans to study a new bill on developing a national GBI framework. Given the need to invest 5% of our GDP in defence and national security by 2035, our efforts and our energy should instead be going toward projects that generate wealth. We’re not living in a fantasy land anymore.

Honourable senators, I believe we need to be more strategic in managing our time and our work and be prudent in the use of public funds. For all these reasons, I suggest that you vote against this bill.

Thank you for your attention. Meegwetch.

Would Senator Gignac agree to answer an question?

It would be my pleasure, senator.

Thank you, senator. I really appreciated your speech. I do have some reservations about some of the comments you made, including regarding private or public bills being considered by the Senate. For example, you said that there were far too many.

Did you know that if the Senate weren’t studying these bills right now, we wouldn’t have much to work on in this chamber?

I don’t know if your comment applies to all senators and all committees, because our committee has already had eight meetings on the subject of access to housing. I think that, here in this chamber, there’s enough grey matter and intellectual capacity to think about a lot of special studies. That’s one of the Senate’s strengths.

I remember that, three years ago, under Senator Dean’s leadership, nobody at the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence was talking about Arctic sovereignty. It was thanks to our colleague’s leadership that we were able to do a special study and see the impact that study had on the government.

Can we influence what gets done? I’m not worried, and I think there are other ways to approach it than by studying bills for which there is a foregone conclusion if you have even a rudimentary understanding of what is going on in the other place. It should be obvious that there is vanishingly little interest in a guaranteed basic income. That’s my answer.

Thank you for the explanation. Here in this chamber, we completely agree as regards public bills. We need to carefully consider the work that we do here in the Senate and the work that gets done in committee. A lot of initiatives are introduced through public bills and could become studies; these studies could be introduced in the form of motions, and certain committees would end up conducting the studies themselves.

Would it be worthwhile to study the guaranteed basic income bill in a different way? More specifically, instead of a bill, there could be a study. There would be much more scrutiny in a committee setting, where the file would undergo an exhaustive analysis. Are you already so sure about how it would go? Do you think bills or studies are unnecessary and not worth the bother?

I want to make a distinction between a bill and a motion. In this instance, I was speaking on a bill. Once a bill is introduced — and correct me if I’m wrong because I have only four years of experience — if I understand how committees work, government bills are given priority, followed by special studies.

With a bill like this one, we have to set our special studies aside. The Banking Committee has several ideas for studies, because it’s the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Commerce and the Economy. Our committee would like to undertake all kinds of studies, but we know that if this bill passes, it will be referred not to our committee, but rather to the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance, most likely, since that committee has already begun studying and working on it.

I do know one thing: all studies must be set aside because after government bills, we have to study these kinds of bills, and at that point, we have to forget about those studies. That is why I spoke out against the bill. Given that Quebec has already analyzed this issue at length with the help of a panel of experts, I would be very uncomfortable with the Senate studying such a bill in committee, especially in 2025, with the new reality that exists in the other place.

Senator Gignac, I would like to come back to the substance of the bill that is on the agenda, Bill S-206.

I was Deputy Minister of Relations with Citizens and Immigration, and as such, I contributed to the study that was done. You said in your speech that one of the findings of the experts and the many specialists and senior officials who were consulted was that this type of measure would have a negative influence on the labour market, as I recall very well, especially on the labour market for newcomers and vulnerable persons. Could you elaborate on these reasons?

I have a quick follow-up question. Consultations were done at the time and comparisons were made with the Government of Ontario that led to comparable conclusions.

I won’t be able to answer your very specific questions in detail, but I’d be happy to get back to you on that.

As a matter of fact, we know the Parliamentary Budget Officer found that labour market participation would drop by 1.5%. We saw how that played out with the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, or CERB, which businesses said made it difficult for them to hire part-time employees, especially in retail and convenience stores. Studies have shown that systems like that disincentivize labour market participation.

The cost of a program like this depends on the goal. If lawmakers don’t want the people receiving benefits associated with those programs to be affected, the deficit would increase significantly. If lawmakers want no impact on the deficit — if they want this change to be fiscally neutral, as our former colleague, Senator Bellemare, explained — a single-parent family with two children would receive less in basic income than if those measures were in place.

I’m sorry I don’t have detailed information about the experts’ findings. This is an undesirable consequence of guaranteed basic income because it eliminates the incentive to participate in the labour market or accept part-time jobs.

Your time is almost up. Are you asking for more time to answer the question?

Apparently, yes, I’d like that.

Is leave granted, honourable senators?

I’ll be brief.

I agree with Senator Gignac that various studies have been done and that some consensus has emerged among Quebec experts that a guaranteed basic income is not the right solution. That is certainly true.

However, I think that to describe our colleague’s bill as a waste of public funds is going way too far. Those words were used last week to describe our senatorial work in a very derogatory manner. If anyone in this chamber disagrees with a bill — which is the case here, because a lot of people disagree with our colleague’s bill — to call it a waste of public funds is in very poor taste, to my mind.

First, if I did use those words, it was inappropriate, but I’d be curious to see the transcript, because I did not use the words “waste of public funds” in my speech. That may be the impression it gave, because I did say that it would be costly and risky, but I don’t believe I used the words “waste of public funds.”

First, if we adopt Senator Housakos’ approach, it is quite clear that we should not launch initiatives that generate spending, but the situation has changed over the past 12 months. We need to focus more on wealth creation. We’re going to have to increase defence investment from 1.5% of GDP to 5% per year.

As we know, the defence budget will increase from $50 billion to $150 billion per year. That is what that means. If we go from $50 billion to $150 billion per year, we need to constantly accelerate wealth creation in this country, which has not been the case for 10 years. Our GDP per capita is stagnant. I believe that such a bill is inappropriate.

If I did say that, it was part of an answer I gave during an exchange because I got a little excited, and I apologize for that. I am not suggesting our colleague, Senator Pate, is ill-intentioned. I have a great deal of respect for her. Like her, we all want to see less poverty in Canada. Senator Bellemare, a distinguished economist and labour market expert, made it clear that guaranteed basic income is not the best way to tackle this problem.

I apologize in advance if I used those words, but I don’t think I talked about a “waste of public funds.”

Yes.

Thank you, senator.

An economist is not an accountant. You could have three economists and four opinions. I think that you are fully aware of that.

All kinds of studies — I do not wish to bother the Senate here with numbers — are based on different parameters. The new Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, or PBO, goes with new parameters, and, in fact, you know that depends on how you work with the parameters.

These kinds of things are just that. If you drill more, I really trust the former PBO. The former PBO had a huge reputation, and I really trust Senator Bellemare. I trust the expert from Quebec on that.

For all of these reasons, I do not want to go —

Senator Gignac, I apologize for interrupting, but your time has expired.