Financially, young people aged 15-19 have benefited greatly from the financial assistance programs offered by the Justin Trudeau administration in 2020 related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Also read: Everything you need to know about CERB reimbursement
• Also read: PCU: The government will have punished honest and hardworking people
These programs were designed to compensate people who lost work and/or lost post-secondary education during the partial paralysis of Canada’s economy.
Thanks to the CERB (Canadian Emergency Response Benefit) and CESB (Canadian Emergency Student Benefit), approximately 1.05 million young Canadians saw their total income increase by 25% in 2020 compared to 2019, the normal year before the catastrophic coronavirus pandemic .
Among other things, my analysis of 2020 tax data reported by Revenue Canada shows that young people under the age of 20 had an income of $2.8 billion more in 2020 than in the normal year 2019.
Per capita, these young people earned an average income of US$13,194 in 2020, which is US$2,913 more than in the previous year when they were working and/or studying.
This means that the generous benefits of the Trudeau administration have not only offset any income losses suffered by young Canadians aged 15-19 due to the 2020 economic crisis, but have also given them a tempting additional income of around 28%. gotta do it!
IN QUEBEC
Have young Quebecers aged 15-19 also benefited greatly from the special benefits Trudeau has offered Canadians during the damn COVID-19 pandemic? Yes!
They even saw a 34% increase in their total income in 2020 compared to 2019, a whopping $900 million. That’s nine percentage points more than the income increase of all young Canadians eligible for the generous federal CERB and CESB benefits.
In 2020, our young Quebecers under 20 reported a median income of $12,848, up $2,992 from 2019, or 30% more.
More precisely…
Of the one million (1,051,000) young Canadians under the age of 20 who reported income in 2020, 620,060 young people, or 59% of young people, would be recipients of COVID-19 benefits.
I estimate the average income they would have made in 2020 thanks to the CERB and CESB benefits would be around $5,570.
In Quebec, of the 277,670 young people under the age of 20 who reported income in 2020, 173,270 (62.4%) reported benefit income. Per capita young people who would have benefited from PCU and PCUE benefits, we are talking about an average amount of US$4,970.
Because of their low income, 74% of taxpayers under the age of 20 do not pay taxes.
