The next 14 sections of this report focus on the amount and adequacy of the total welfare incomes of our example households in Canada’s provinces and territories.

The first section (Overview: Welfare incomes across Canada) provides a cross-Canada overview, grouped into the provinces and the territories, that includes:

• An overview of the amounts of total welfare incomes across Canada by household,
• An analysis of changes to welfare incomes from the previous year,
• An overview of income adequacy relative to Canada’s poverty measures, 
• An analysis of income adequacy by household, and
• An analysis of the proportion of total welfare income from provincial/territorial and federal sources by household.

Thereafter we present the total welfare incomes of our example households for each province and territory, listed alphabetically. Each jurisdiction’s section includes:

• The components of welfare incomes, including social assistance payments, child benefits, and other tax credits/benefits, for each of our example households,
• Changes in total welfare incomes for each household over time in constant 2024 dollars,
• An analysis of the adequacy of the total welfare incomes of each household in relation to poverty and/or low-income measures currently in use in Canada, and
• An examination of the adequacy of the total welfare incomes of each household over time.

As outlined in the Methodology section, “total welfare income” refers to the total amount of income a household receives from all government transfers, including but not limited to social assistance payments. We examine the total welfare incomes of four example households in each jurisdiction, except for Alberta and Manitoba (where we examine five) and Quebec (where we examine six) due to the program specifics in these jurisdictions; more information is available in each jurisdiction’s section.

All the data included in this report is available for download by jurisdiction and for the whole of Canada.