An optimist’s guide to Welfare in Canada

Earlier this month, Maytree released the latest edition of Welfare in Canada, which looks at the total welfare incomes in 2024 of several example households in every province and territory.

Those who have followed our series will have an intuitive sense of the findings: Households who rely on social assistance typically live a life of state-sanctioned deep poverty. Once again, Welfare in Canada shows that these families are expected to live on incomes that deny their right to an adequate standard of living.

Sitting with this heavy reality, a silver lining may feel like cold comfort. But buried in the data for 2024 are a few pieces of good news. Across Canada, more than half of the example households we track saw their welfare incomes rise faster than the cost of living since 2023. Several jurisdictions have recently made large investments that have material impacts on people’s lives. This should be a source of hope for all those who advocate for human dignity and an end to poverty, and an example to policymakers that much more can be done.

The standout in 2024 was New Brunswick. A single adult considered employable in that province saw their total welfare income rise by 27 per cent. People with disabilities and households with children also saw significant increases. The cause was the new Household Supplement, a basic social assistance benefit for all households in the amount of $200 per person per month effective February 2024. Thanks to this investment, people in New Brunswick who receive welfare are no longer at the bottom of the pack compared to recipients in other provinces and territories.

Another bright spot was the 22 per cent increase in total welfare incomes for a single adult with a disability in Nova Scotia. This was thanks to a new Disability Supplement introduced in May 2024, which brought this household’s welfare income as a proportion of the poverty line up to levels we haven’t seen since the late 1990s.

We could also point to BC’s new Renters’ Tax Credit, which provides a small but important amount of assistance with the high cost of housing.

These increases are due to the creation of new income streams for people receiving social assistance. They demonstrate that when the political will exists, jurisdictions can and do find creative ways to provide better supports to people with low incomes.

Looking at a longer time horizon, at least one province deserves credit for a multi-year trend of investment. Prince Edward Island has set a steady pace of annual increases since 2018 that have lifted the welfare incomes of every example household we track to levels that have never been reached in that province going back to the beginning of our dataset in 1986. PEI now offers some of highest welfare incomes in Canada relative to the poverty line in Charlottetown. 

Finally, there are reasons for hope when we look to the future. The Canada Disability Benefit (CDB) may not be the poverty eliminator that it was originally billed to be, but it will raise the total welfare incomes of the single adult with a disability household in most provinces and territories by up to $2,400 over the next two years. (Unfortunately, a combination of clawbacks and the CDB’s income exemption will mean people in Alberta, the Northwest Territories, and the Yukon will benefit less or not at all.)

Building on the CDB, the Newfoundland and Labrador government has announced its own new disability benefit that will add as much as $4,800 more to a single person’s total welfare income in that province starting in July 2025.

Similarly, Prince Edward Island is making an important new investment in households with children. After many years of being one of only two provinces without a child benefit program, PEI introduced the PEI Child Benefit in January 2025. Households with children who receive social assistance in PEI will see an additional $360 per child per year.

It is also worth noting that Nova Scotia indexed social assistance benefits to inflation starting in January 2025. While indexing benefits to inflation doesn’t address income inadequacy, it helps to stabilize the lives of those in greatest need. When incomes are so low, even small price increases can cause families to go hungry or to lose their homes.

These small improvements, random and disconnected as they might seem, are a cause for hope. Many jurisdictions across the country seem to be taking steps toward meeting their responsibility for ensuring universal human dignity through income security. Small steps yes, but important nonetheless, and worthy of recognition.

These small steps don’t erase the deep poverty that most people face when they receive social assistance, but they do confirm what we who work for people’s basic human dignity know: poverty is not inevitable. It’s a policy choice. And better choices can and must be made.