Free money for Canadian Ontario government announced

Finland and The Netherlands have already shown their interest in giving people a regular monthly allowance regardless of working status, and now Ontario, Canada, is onboard.

Ontario's government announced in February that a pilot program will be coming to the Canadian province sometime later this year.


The premise: Send people monthly checks to cover living expenses such as food, transportation, clothing, and utilities — no questions asked.

It's a radical idea, and one that has been around since the 1960s. It's called "basic income." In the decades since it was first proposed, various researchers and government officials have given basic income experiments a try, with mixed results.

Folks at the Basic Income Canada Network, the national organization promoting basic income, have high hopes.

"We need it rolled out across Canada, and Quebec, too, is in the game," said chair of BICN, Sheila Regehr, in a statement. "So there's no reason why people and governments in other parts of this country need sit on the sidelines – it's time for us all to get to work."

Ontario officials haven't decided when or where exactly it'll roll out the program, nor how much each person will receive. When it does start, the money will come from a portion of Ontario's budget set aside for the experiment.

In Finland, a small social-democratic country, people will receive an additional 800 euros, or just shy of $900. In various cities throughout The Netherlands, people receive an extra $1,000.