Low-income families receiving Canada Child Benefit (CCB) will increase their benefits by 2.4% starting Wednesday, Justin Trudeau announced Wednesday.
Families who qualify for CCB can now receive up to $6,997 ($583 per month) per child under the age of six and up to $5,903 ($491 per month) for each child between the ages of 6 and 17.
“We’ve seen hundreds of thousands of children lifted out of poverty over the years because we stopped sending checks to millionaire families and sent more to families in need,” the prime minister said in a video.
This announcement coincides with Statistics Canada’s inflation announcement on Wednesday. This reached 8.1% in June, mainly due to the rise in gasoline prices.
The Trudeau government, established in 2016, linked the 2018 program to inflation.
For 2020-2021, there were just over 3,750,000 CCB recipients with a total cost of $25 million.
The number of women receiving ACE during the same period was much higher than the number of men, at 3,533,940 versus 214,390.
Despite the fact that Ontario has almost twice the population of Quebec, it is in Quebec that we find the most men touching the ACE, namely 80,290, while in Ontario it was 61,850.
Ottawa says its program helped lift 782,000 children out of poverty between 2015 and 2020.
CCB benefits are tax-free and adjusted to the applicant’s income.