Ontario’s basic income pilot program scrapped

Ontario’s new Progressive Conservative government is scrapping the province’s basic income pilot program.

Social Services Minister Lisa Macleod announced Tuesday that the government would come up with a plan within 100 days to overhaul what she describes as a “disjointed patchwork system” left by the Liberal government.

The basic income pilot program has been providing payments to 4,000 people with low incomes in Hamilton, Brantford, Thunder Bay and Lindsay.

The project reached full enrollment in April, the same time a spokesman for now-Premier Doug Ford said that the project would continue under a Progressive Conservative government.

It was budgeted to cost $150 million over a period of three years.

This type of social assistance welfare program serves almost 1 million people in Ontario.