Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In this House, we have the honour of debating and discussing some of the larger policy ideas. One you will hear me speak about over the next three years is a universal basic income.
Mr. Speaker, I want to reiterate that, despite the fact that I talk about this large, very lofty program that would change the nature of government and society, and it's a program I fundamentally believe in, I don't believe, since we're having that debate, that all other conversations around social assistance programs are just kind of put on hold. One of my concerns is that I recognize that a universal basic income would take, probably, ten years and millions of dollars and require support from the federal government, but that doesn't mean we can't start now. What happens is while we are having that much larger debate, we don't set ourselves up for success in starting small now.
I want to clarify some of the terms that often get thrown around in this world. A universal basic income is the proposal you give everyone money every month. You've seen different jurisdictions do this. It can be $1,000 a month. It can be $3,000 a month. It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor. Such a policy would cost millions of dollars and be a complete transformation on how government operates.
Then, there's a guaranteed basic income, not necessarily universal, which would guarantee an amount of income to every person in the Northwest Territories. What that amount is, is up for debate. It could be $12,000 a year. They could say, no one in the Northwest Territories is going to make less than $12,000 a year, and it doesn't matter if you don't do your proactive step, or you miss your income assistance program. We're just guaranteeing that.
Then, there's a guaranteed livable income which actually kicks that up to an amount so you're not just squaloring away in poverty, say, $36,000 a year.
There are a variety of options, but meanwhile, while we have this debate in this House, I want the Department of Education, Culture and Employment to be picking away at some smaller non-controversial changes. I believe we could start a guaranteed basic income pilot project tomorrow. We could take ten people out of income assistance who have been on it for years. We could guarantee them a liveable income for a year, and it would probably cost us less than a half million dollars to do it, and it might in the long run actually save us some money. I would like departments to start small, to look at the next smallest policy change they can make that gets us to that bigger picture. I will have questions for the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.