Families will receive the latest installment of the Canada Child Benefit payment on April 19, as part of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government’s design to redistribute wealth to lower-income families.
Canada Child Benefit (CCB) payments are paid monthly to families with children under the age of 18, and the amount paid is based on family income. Payment amounts are adjusted each July for the next year and are based on the most recent tax returns of the parents.
Families with an income under $34,863 are
paid the maximum amount for each child—which for those under six years is $619.75 per month or $7,863 annually, and for children 6 to 17 years old, payments are $522.91 a month or $6,275 each year.
Divorced couples with 50/50 parenting also split the CCB in half, with each parent getting a portion of the payment.
Statistics Canada
numbers show that for the 2021 tax year, a total of $25,040,814 was distributed as CCB payments to about 3.7 million Canadian families.
However, a 2022 report said the payments do not do enough to help low-income families.
“The Canada Child Benefit (CCB) has failed to insulate many low-income families from poverty and food insecurity. These circumstances have severe impacts on children’s immediate and long-term health, development, and occupational and social life chances,” a
submission to the Standing Committee on Health (HESA) on Children’s Health said.
The submission was a joint effort between Proof, a research organization that was started with funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and Campaign 2020, which is a self-described public education awareness movement aiming to end child poverty.
The groups call for more government money for lower-income Canadians, and to make it easier for “marginalized communities” such as immigrants to access the tax benefit.
It is not the first time the benefits of the payments have been questioned.
A report in 2021 disputed the government’s position that the benefit helped alleviate child poverty.
“One of the stated goals of the Canada Child Benefit was to help lift children out of poverty, but most of the households that benefit from this new program compared to the previous ones were never living in poverty in the first place,”
said professor Christopher Sarlo, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute and author of “
Does the Canada Child Benefit (CCB) Actually Reduce Child Poverty?“
Mr. Sarlo
noted that middle-class families receive the bulk of payments at 56 percent, while lower-income households receive 16 percent of payments.
Isaac Teo contributed to this report.
