Over 1 Million Post-Secondary Students Collected Pandemic Relief Cheques in 2020: StatCan

The landing page for the Canada Emergency Response Benefit is seen on Aug. 10, 2020. Giordano Ciampini/The Canadian Press

Over 1 million post-secondary students collected the federal government’s pandemic relief subsidies in 2020, according to a new Statistics Canada report, which also found that thousands of students collected more than just one of the available benefits.

“Almost two-thirds of postsecondary students (65.4%) received emergency benefits,” says the report titled, “Postsecondary students receiving payments from the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and the Canada Emergency Student Benefit (CESB) in 2020,” published on Jan. 16, as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.

CERB was intended for Canadians who either lost work or had their hours reduced as a result of COVID-19. Applicants received $2,000 during the initial a four-week period and could reapply for additional periods, eventually extending to 28 weeks for a maximum benefit of $14,000.

CESB, on the other hand, was for students enrolled in a post-secondary education “leading to a degree, diploma, or certificate, who were ineligible for the CERB or EI benefits, but met various other eligibility criteria.”

CESB was only available between May 10 and Aug. 29, 2020, and was worth just $1,250 over a four-week period, with the possibility of collecting up to $5,000 of the benefit over a total 16-week period.

A total of 1,006,300 students collected either CERB or CESB in 2020, says the report, while 533,000 did not collect either of the subsidies.

Despite the eligibility criteria, nearly 42 percent of all students collected CERB, while only about 29 percent collected CESB.

Statistics Canada says this was “due, in part, to the fact that one of the eligibility requirements for CESB was that the individual could not apply for, receive, or qualify for CERB during the same eligibility period, but could qualify for different types of benefits in different eligibility periods.”

“Therefore, only those students who were ineligible for CERB could apply for CESB.”

Just over 5 percent of all students, representing more than 80,000, collected both CERB and CESB in 2020.

Other Findings

Statistics Canada also found that $4,200 was the average amount of CESB collected, while $8,200 was the average amount of CERB collected by those students who received it.

Additionally, the report found that a slightly higher percentage of female students than male collected CERB, while more male students collected CESB. It said the slight difference “may be due to women having been more severely affected by employment losses in the service sector than men” during the pandemic.

Auditor General Karen Hogan found in a December 2022 audit that about $4.6 billion worth of pandemic relief subsidies were sent to ineligible recipients, and about $27.4 billion went to individuals whose eligibility status still needs to be confirmed.

Minister of Employment Carla Qualtrough said on Dec. 6 that her department had issued 1.8 million overpayment notices to ineligible recipients and had recovered about $1.3 billion at the time.

Hogan said in her audit that she is “concerned about the lack of rigour on post-payment verifications and collection activities,” but Qualtrough said her department has a “strong plan” to recover all benefits previously sent to ineligible recipients.

“We are carrying out this work methodically,” she said.

Tara MacIsaac contributed to this report.