VANCOUVER—Despite spending an additional $5.6 billion in 2019-20, the new Canada Child Benefit only moved an estimated 90,900 children above Statistics Canada’s Low-Income Cut-Off, a key measure of low-income, finds a new essay released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.
“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, senior fellow at the Fraser Institute and author of Does the Canada Child Benefit (CCB) Actually Reduce Child Poverty?
