That will likely not work as planned. My father has been an bus operator out of Birchmount and Eglinton for 30 years this January. There are certain routes like McCowan which run through high density, low income areas that are well known by operators for passengers being "unable to pay a full fare". Essentially there are repeat offenders who attempt to abuse the system by using invalid (old, wrong direction or route, etc) transfers or by claiming they can't pay a full fare for whatever reason.
Supplementing social assistance recipients to help with transit will not accomplish anything. They will still try to use their 3 week old transfer from another route as a metropass and still not pay a full fare.
Without getting racist, other routes such as Kennedy and Markham Road experience similar issues wherein older Asian passengers attempt to evade paying a fare by using an invalid transfer. I have seen it with my own eyes in the area of McCowan and Steeles, where when they get caught they pull money out of their pocket to pay or pretend not to speak English.
Supplementing peoples income to pay for transit won't help, what is needed is a tougher stance on fare evasion and more enforcement.
Right now operators being pressed for time on their routes take a blind eye to fare evasion because they don't want to be assaulted or written up for being behind by too many minutes at the ends of the line.
