The state of welfare in Canada: The federal role in income security
Maytree’s Welfare in Canada report is the primary source for evaluating Canada’s progress on fulfilling the human right to an adequate standard of living for households receiving social assistance.
This webinar presented the main findings of the 2025 edition, offered additional analysis, and shared Maytree’s recommendations for improving the incomes of people receiving social assistance.
The webinar also highlighted the impact of the loss of the Canada Carbon Rebate in 2025, leading to a broader analysis of the federal government’s role in ensuring income security, particularly for unattached single adults.
The conversation brought together report authors Jennefer Laidley and Tania Oliveira, with insights from Alexi White, Maytree’s Director of Systems Change
Maytree president Elizabeth McIsaac moderated the discussion.
Related:
- Welfare in Canada, 2025
- Falling further behind: How policy choices are deepening poverty for people receiving social assistance
Transcript
(The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)
Elizabeth:
Today’s presentation by Jennefer and Tania is based on Welfare in Canada, 2025 and the policy brief Falling further behind: How policy choices are deepening poverty for people receiving social assistance. Jennefer Laidley is a Maytree fellow and lead author of Welfare in Canada since 2020. She’s also co-authored this year’s policy brief. Many of us know Jennefer from many, many years of working on this file. Welcome, Jennefer.
[Slide 1: Intro page]
Jennefer:
Thanks Elizabeth and hello everyone.
Welcome to the Welfare in Canada 2025 webinar and thanks very much for being with us today.
I’m joining you from the traditional territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation in British Columbia, and I want to recognize their historical stewardship of and title to the land on which I am fortunate to live and work.
A few other thank-yous are in order before we begin:
Thanks to the government officials in the provinces and territories who confirmed our data and provided very important information to assist our work.
And to experts at Statistics Canada, who have given us very helpful advice and who produce the poverty and low-income thresholds that we use.
And thank you to our colleagues in the systems change and communications teams at Maytree for their innumerable contributions, as well as to our external editor.
[Slide 2: Welfare in Canada]
So, to start – Welfare in Canada 2025 is the latest in a series of reports that help us understand the amount and adequacy of the total income of households who receive social assistance from various government sources in Canada.
It’s also an important source of information about other aspects of social assistance programs, which are organized into a section called “Key features of social assistance.”
As such, Welfare in Canada is the primary source available to help keep track of governments’ commitments to the right to an adequate standard of living.
As always, we hope that the report is a useful resource for researchers, advocates, government officials, and others, especially in efforts to improve the lives of people receiving social assistance across Canada.
[Slide 3: Today’s presentation]
Tania:
Thank you, Elizabeth and Jennefer! Hello everyone.
Our presentation today will start with some background information about the report and its history.
Then we’ll contextualize the data by briefly talking about the methodology we use to calculate total welfare incomes.
After that, we’ll move into the analysis of the data in the report.
We’ll look at how adequate welfare incomes were in 2025 and how adequacy has changed over time.
Next, we’ll move into a discussion of the federal role in income security by looking at a number of federal issues, starting with the impact of the loss of the carbon tax rebate in 2025, then how federal tax credit design disadvantages the lowest income single adults.
Next, we’ll look at shelter benefits provided by the provinces and territories and how the federal government could contribute to making those more adequate.
Then, we’ll discuss improvements needed to make the Canada Disability Benefit more adequate and accessible.
And finally, we’ll share recommendations for how the provinces, territories, and the federal government could improve the incomes of people receiving social assistance in Canada.
[Slide 4: History of the report]
Jennefer:
And just for some historical context.
Welfare in Canada, 2025 is the latest in a series of reports that go back nearly 40 years.
In 1987, the National Council of Welfare published Welfare in Canada: The Tangled Safety Net.
This report was groundbreaking, as it was the first comprehensive national analysis of social assistance programs in Canada.
And it established the methodology for calculating total welfare incomes and measuring adequacy that we still use and that we’ll talk about next.
The Council then published annual reports in its Welfare Incomes series, which ran from 1989 to 2009.
After the Council was defunded, the Caledon Institute of Social Policy continued the work in a series called Welfare in Canada, that ran from 2012 to 2016.
And Maytree picked up this work starting with the 2017 report.
[Slide 5: Methodology: Explain methodology and assumptions]
The majority of the report is made up of the analysis of total welfare incomes.
So how do we calculate these incomes?
Our methodology has remained consistent since that first Tangled Safety Net report. This allows us to maintain the time series, and to compare data year over year.
So, in each of the 13 provinces and territories, we look at the total incomes of four example household types: unattached singles considered employable, unattached singles with a disability, single parents with one child aged 2, and couples with two children aged 10 and 15.
In total, we look at the incomes of 56 households across the country – which includes four extra households. We have one extra in Alberta, one in Manitoba, and two in Quebec.
I’ll just note that the report doesn’t reflect every person’s experience of receiving social assistance. It’s intended to be illustrative rather than universal.
And we make a number of assumptions when calculating total welfare incomes, most of which are listed here.
You can get more information about our methodology in the report.
[Slide 6: Components]
Tania:
So, when we say, “total welfare income,” what do we mean? We’re referring not just to social assistance benefits.
The “total welfare income” of a household is made up of several components, all of which are government transfers.
At the provincial and territorial level, this includes the basic and additional social assistance benefits that are regularly provided to all recipients from the program in the jurisdiction where they live.
Basic benefits are those for costs like food, clothing, and shelter.
Additional benefits are those universally provided for specific costs, like a winter clothing allowance or a disability allowance.
It also includes provincial or territorial tax credits and benefits, and child benefits for households with children – if their jurisdiction has these programs.
At the federal level, total welfare income also includes federal tax credits and benefits, which are the GST credit and credit supplement, and the Canada Carbon Rebate for households in eight of the provinces – which we’ll talk about more in a few minutes – as well as the Canada Child Benefit for households with children.
[Slide 7: Adequacy measures]
Jennefer:
Now that we know the components of total welfare incomes, we’ll look at the adequacy of those incomes.
This is probably the most important analysis in the report because it tells us how well – or not well – households receiving social assistance in Canada are doing.
So how do we measure adequacy?
For households in the provinces, we compare total welfare incomes to the Market Basket Measure.
In the territories, we use the Northern Market Basket Measure.
They represent Canada’s Official Poverty Line and are used by the federal government to track progress on poverty reduction.
We also compare welfare incomes to the Deep Income Poverty threshold, which is 75 per cent of the Poverty Line and represents a severe level of poverty.
And we compare the incomes of our households in the provinces with the Low-Income Measure and the Low Income Cut Off. These measures are helpful for making both historical and international comparisons.
The next several graphs will give an overview of adequacy for 2025 and show how adequate total welfare incomes were for each of our example households.
[Slide 8: Adequacy in 2025: Overview]
Tania:
Overall, in 2025, 98 per cent of our example households, or 55 of the 56, were living on incomes below the Official Poverty Line.
The majority – 40 of the 56, or 71 per cent – were living below the Deep Income Poverty threshold.
And 15 – or 27 per cent – were living above deep poverty but below the poverty line.
So we can see widespread inadequacy and deep poverty as the norm across all of our example household types.
Next, we will move to the analysis of adequacy by household.
[Slide 9: Adequacy for unattached singles considered employable]
In these next four graphs, we’ll analyze total welfare incomes according to two measures of adequacy: total welfare income as a percentage of the Official Poverty Line, and the size of the poverty gap, which is the dollar difference between total welfare incomes and the Official Poverty Line.
The graphs are presented as stacked bars. The blue portion represents total welfare income, while the red represents the poverty gap, with the dollar amount of the poverty gap displayed. And for each jurisdiction, at the top of the bar, we have the Official Poverty Line.
This first graph is for our unattached single considered employable household type.
The most important thing about this graph is that it shows that 12 of our 14 unattached single employable households were living in deep poverty in 2025.
One was above deep poverty, but was still in poverty, in the Northwest Territories. And one other was above the poverty line, and that was in Quebec, for those receiving Manpower Training benefits.
When we look at the poverty gap, we get a better sense of what these percentages mean, because, for example, the biggest poverty gap, which is in Nunavut, is nearly thirty thousand dollars $30,000.
But you’ll notice that this household type is doing better in some jurisdictions based on the percentage of the poverty line, but is worse off if we look at the dollar value of the poverty gap.
So, taking both of these analyses into account is important when looking at how well people in each of these jurisdictions are doing.
For example, the percentage of poverty line analysis has Nunavut, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Alberta, and New Brunswick with the lowest incomes.
But the poverty gap analysis shows Nunavut, Ontario, Alberta, BC, and Nova Scotia with the highest poverty gaps.
The poverty gap approach exposes how households in several of the larger provinces may live in deeper poverty despite reaching a higher percentage of the poverty line.
Before proceeding, we want to note that while all households in Nunavut had very low, inadequate incomes; inadequacy in Nunavut is likely overestimated by our calculations, as we explain in the report.
[Slide 10: Adequacy for unattached singles with a disability]
This slide looks at adequacy for our unattached single with a disability household type.
The official poverty line thresholds are exactly the same as those of the unattached singles considered employable on the last slide.
However, because the Official Poverty Line does not consider the added costs of living with a disability, the poverty of these households is likely underrepresented.
But even so, all 15 unattached single with a disability households were living in poverty in 2025. Eleven were living in deep poverty.
Again, the households with the lowest incomes relative to the poverty line were in Nunavut, Alberta (for those receiving Barriers to Full Employment), New Brunswick, Manitoba (for those receiving Manitoba Barriers to Full Employment), and Ontario.
The highest were in Newfoundland and Labrador, Alberta for households receiving AISH benefits, in the Yukon, and in the Northwest Territories.
Looking through the poverty gap measure, we again find that the relative position changes.
The largest poverty gaps were in Nunavut, Alberta, Ontario, New Brunswick, and Manitoba. This just shows that people in some of the largest provinces in Canada, where most people with disabilities receiving social assistance live, are living with a very high poverty gap.
[Slide 11: Adequacy for single parent with one child]
Here’s adequacy for our single parent with one child household type.
Again, none had incomes above the poverty line in 2025.
The households with the lowest incomes relative to the poverty line were in Nunavut, Ontario, Nova Scotia, BC, and Alberta.
Those with the highest were in Quebec, PEI, the Northwest Territories, and the Yukon.
When using a poverty gap analysis, the largest poverty gaps were in Nunavut, Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and Alberta.
[Slide 12: Adequacy for couple with two children]
And here is adequacy for our couple with two children household type.
All 14 of these households were living below the poverty line in 2025.
Again, the households with the lowest incomes relative to the poverty line were in Nunavut, Ontario, New Brunswick, BC, and Alberta.
Those with the highest were in the Northwest Territories, QC (for those receiving Aim for Employment), in the Yukon, PEI, and Quebec (for Manpower training).
Using a poverty gap analysis, the largest poverty gaps were in Nunavut, Ontario, BC, New Brunswick, and Alberta, so there’s only a small switch there.
[Slide 13: Adequacy 2024-2025]
Next, we’ll look at whether there’s been progress on adequacy since last year overall.
The national rate of inflation in 2025 was 2.1 per cent, so total welfare incomes would have needed to increase by more than 2.1 per cent for adequacy to improve.
Unfortunately, the situation is concerning. Incomes increased at a higher rate than inflation for only about one-third of all the example household types we analyzed.
41 per cent of our household types saw nominal gains, but these gains were not enough to keep pace with inflation, leaving them worse off.
And 27 per cent saw their total incomes decline even before taking inflation into account.
Overall, 2025 was a year in which most households fell further behind and were forced into even deeper poverty.
Even though the rate of inflation slowed in 2025, prices remained elevated since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The high cost of living makes basic necessities such as food and housing increasingly difficult to afford for people receiving social assistance.
[Slide 14: Adequacy over time]
Another analysis we do in the report is to look at how adequate incomes have been historically.
The data goes back to 2002 for the provinces and 2018 for the territories. The vertical lines refer to when the Market Basket Measure was rebased, which is explained in the report.
In these next few slides, we’ll draw attention to a few of the 13 jurisdictions to illustrate where investments by provincial or territorial governments have driven progress and where little or no progress has been made.
First, we’ll highlight the improvements.
In the Northwest Territories, which you’ll see here in these two graphs – one for unattached singles and the other for households with children – adequacy has been improving since 2023, and you’ll note that all households are either above or only slightly below deep income poverty across the entire time series.
[Slide 15: Adequacy over time]
Nova Scotia, on the left of this slide, was the only jurisdiction that introduced inflationary indexing of its social assistance benefits in 2025, joining only six other jurisdictions where at least some of these benefits are indexed.
Total welfare incomes are still well below the deep income poverty line in Nova Scotia, so much more needs to be done besides indexation of benefits.
And PEI has made a number of improvements to income adequacy over the last many years, most recently introducing a new provincial child benefit in January 2025 that improved income adequacy for the households with children, which we see here on the right. Incomes for those households have been above deep poverty since 2021.
[Slide 16: Adequacy over time]
In other instances, we see some jurisdictions have made little or no progress to improve adequacy.
These two graphs show that poverty is worsening in Ontario, especially since 2020. And incomes have been below the deep poverty line in every year for almost all households. So there is a lot of work to be done in Ontario – especially for the unattached single considered employable households.
The only bright spot in Ontario is that indexing for the unattached single with a disability household is providing protection against inflation; however, as in all other cases, their incomes are also well below the poverty line.
[Slide 17: Adequacy over time]
And we also see a significant depth of poverty in British Columbia, where incomes for all households have been below the deep income poverty line since 2002.
We have seen some fairly significant fluctuations in recent years, mostly due to the introduction and cancellation of COVID-19 related benefits, but most recently, in 2025, basic social assistance benefits remained unchanged for all households.
[Slide 18: Carbon tax rebate losses in 2025]
Jennefer:
So now we’re going to move on to talk a bit about the federal role in income security for people receiving social assistance in Canada.
We start with looking at one of the most notable changes to total welfare incomes in 2025, which came not from a change in income support policy but a change in federal environmental policy.
You’ll recall that the first thing the federal government did after winning office in 2025 was to end the federal carbon tax.
That decision not only ended the tax, it also ended the carbon tax rebate system. The rebate system made the carbon tax revenue-neutral, and, most importantly, provided more benefit to lower-income households.
For our households receiving social assistance, that meant the loss of a fairly significant benefit – and you can see in this table how much each household received from carbon tax rebates in 2025 versus 2024, and what that represents in terms of a percentage loss.
By 2026 these households will have lost the entire value of the benefit so we plan on doing a deeper dive into this issue next year.
[Slide 19: Impact of carbon tax rebate losses in 2025]
But for now, we can show the impact of the loss of carbon tax rebates by revisiting one of the findings that we talked about earlier.
Carbon tax rebates ended in the spring of 2025, after two payments were made.
But if our households had received the same amount in the last half of 2025 as they got in the first half, our findings about what happened between 2024 and 2025 would have been much different.
The most striking difference is that none of our households would have seen a decrease in total welfare incomes.
The proportion of households seeing their incomes increase below inflation would have been 36 per cent instead of 41 per cent.
And nearly double would have seen an income increase above inflation – so nearly twice as many households would have been better off in 2025 than they were the year before.
That is a striking change in outcomes based on the loss of a relatively small amount of money.
And all of this signals two things – first, that policy changes in areas other than income support can have adverse ripple effects, and second, that small amounts of money can make a big difference for people whose incomes are so very low.
[Slide 20: Federal tax credit design unfair to those with lowest incomes]
Small amounts also make a big difference in another federal benefit, the GST Credit, which was recently changed to the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit.
The GST Credit has been an important source of income for low-income people in Canada for many years. Its purpose has been to offset the cost of the GST that we all pay on various goods and services.
The Credit, for our purposes, has two primary parts.
First is the base amount that goes to all tax filers with incomes under a certain threshold. Extra amounts are provided for a spouse or dependent children.
The second part is a supplement for single people.
The Supplement was put in place when the GST Credit was created 35 years ago to recognize that single people have an extra cost burden associated with trying to maintain a household on their own.
The amount from the base credit for each tax filer in 2025 was about $345 for the whole year, while the Supplement amount was about $182.
And in 2026, the federal government changed the GST Credit into the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit.
The stated rationale for this change was “to support those most affected by the rising price of food.”
For the next five years, the amount of the benefit will be increased by 25 per cent.
And in 2026, households received an additional 50 per cent top-up payment.
But the structure of the Groceries and Essentials Benefit is based on the structure of the GST Credit, and that structure disadvantages the lowest income single people by design.
[Slide 21: Design of GST/CGEB Singles Supplement]
We can see that structural disadvantage in this graph.
Along the bottom of this graph is income, and up the left side is the amount of the Single Supplement.
What the line shows is the amount of the Supplement a single person would receive as their income increases.
So, at the bottom left, the line starts at zero dollars of income and zero Supplement. As income increases across the bottom, the Supplement amount stays at zero, until income reaches about $11,000. This graph is based on thresholds for the Supplement in the last half of 2025.
After that, the line increases gradually, so as income increases beyond $11,000, the amount of the Supplement increases gradually.
Then the full amount of the Supplement, which is about $182, kicks in when a person’s income reaches about $20,000.
After that, the Supplement stays the same until income reaches about $45,000, and then the Supplement decreases, reaching zero at an income of about $50,000.
So this shows us a few things:
First, the full amount of the Supplement goes only to single people with incomes between a particular range – in this case, between about $20,000 and about $45,000.
Second, those with incomes that are a little lower or higher than that only get part of the Supplement.
And third, and most disturbingly, those whose incomes are very low – below about $11,000 here – get no benefit from the single Supplement at all.
In 2025, only four of our unattached single households received the full Supplement amount. Twenty received a partial amount, and five – the ones with the lowest incomes – received nothing at all.
But the worst part is that this structure has been carried over into the Canada Groceries and Essentials benefit.
Those same 5 households – the households who are getting the least from the social assistance programs in their province or territory – won’t get any of the extra funds that are supposed to help people pay for the skyrocketing cost of food.
Only 4 will get the full benefit – and those are the households who are already receiving the highest incomes. Everyone else will only get part of the extra funds.
Remember that we’re talking about people whose incomes are generally well below the poverty line, and, in most cases, below the deep poverty line.
The federal government needs to end this structural disadvantage so that all single adults receiving social assistance get the full benefit.
[Slide 22: Shelter benefits and housing costs]
So now we move on to an analysis related to one of the highest-cost items for people receiving social assistance, and that’s housing.
The housing crisis continued in 2025, and while governments were focused on increasing housing supply, people receiving social assistance still couldn’t afford to pay the rent.
This table compares the amount of social assistance shelter benefits available to an unattached single considered employable household in 2025, with the asking rental price for a room in several urban centres in Canada.
We chose a room for this analysis, because that’s often where people receiving social assistance are forced to live because of their low incomes.
In six of the nine jurisdictions we’re looking at here, a specific monthly benefit is provided for shelter. In the three others – the ones that are highlighted in blue – monthly benefits are provided in one combined amount for all expenses.
So, this shows that, in the six jurisdictions that provide a separate, specific benefit for shelter, that benefit was not enough to pay the asking price for a room in 2025 in all but one urban area. Only in Winnipeg was the shelter benefit sufficient.
And again, that’s only for a room. Not an apartment.
In the three jurisdictions with combined benefits, only two were enough to pay for a room, but that left only a small amount to pay for everything else that that household would need.
[Slide 23: Maytree’s proposal: Canada Renters Credit]
One way to resolve that problem – and to resolve it quickly – would be for the federal government, as part of its National Housing Strategy, to create a direct housing transfer for low-income renters in Canada.
Our colleagues at Maytree have created a proposal for a Canada Renters Credit, which would go at least some way toward filling the rent gap that people receiving social assistance experience across the country.
The proposal is for a refundable tax credit that would provide up to $200 per month to low-income single renter households who are renting at market rates, and higher amounts for larger households.
All of the single households that we examined in the provinces in 2025 would qualify for this benefit.
This graph shows how much the Renters Credit would fill the rent gap that we examined in the last slide if it had been in effect in 2025.
The blue parts of the bars are the social assistance benefits, the black lines are asking rents, and the orange parts is the $200 Renters Credit.
The three different blues show three different outcome scenarios.
First, in Winnipeg, Moncton, and Montreal, as we said before, benefits are sufficient to pay for rent, although in two of these instances those benefits are for all expenses, not just rent.
In St. John’s, Halifax, and Saskatoon, the Renters Credit would more than fill the rent gap.
And in Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto, where rents are often high, the Renters Credit would partially fill the gap.
If the federal government instituted a direct benefit, like the CRC as part of its National Housing Strategy, many more households could afford to pay the rent.
You can read more about this proposal on the Maytree website.
[Slide 24: Flaws in the Canada Disability Benefit]
Tania:
Another area where the federal government could make improvements is disability benefits for people receiving social assistance.
The federal government took an important step forward by introducing the Canada Disability Benefit.
However, its current design has several shortcomings, many of which were identified in our previous research, as well as by other researchers.
The most concerning flaws are highlighted on this slide.
But this year, we really want to highlight a key barrier faced by many people with disabilities receiving social assistance: Eligibility for the CDB is tied to eligibility for the Disability Tax Credit.
This overly restrictive eligibility criteria disentitles a lot of people with a disability who are already designated as “a person with a disability” by the social assistance program in their jurisdiction.
People who have already qualified for provincial or territorial programs should be automatically eligible to receive the CDB.
That would be a significant reduction in the barriers that low-income people with disabilities face to access much-needed income support.
And you can read more about Maytree’s analysis of these issues on the website.
[Slide 25: Summary of major themes]
Jennefer:
So, just to recap.
2025 was a year in which most households relying on social assistance fell further behind and were forced into even deeper poverty, despite improvements in some jurisdictions.
And the inadequacy of total welfare incomes has been the case for a long time.
In other words, the income security system we have doesn’t actually provide income security.
Changes in other policy areas can have big impacts for low-income people on social assistance, and the loss of small benefit amounts can make a big difference.
The design of federal benefits can also make a big difference, with a structural disadvantage persisting despite a change in the benefit’s policy rationale.
Social assistance shelter benefits aren’t enough to pay the rent, and direct federal transfers could help with housing affordability.
Specific changes are needed to the Canada Disability Benefit – especially those that would make it more accessible .
So now, what do we do about all of this?
[Slide 26: Recommendations (federal)]
Tania:
We’ll start with our recommendations for the provinces and territories, which must invest in the adequacy of total welfare incomes by investing in higher social assistance benefits and tax-delivered income supports, to address the very deep poverty that the majority of people receiving social assistance are forced to live in.
And this includes increasing shelter benefits so they better reflect the actual cost of adequate, appropriate housing for all households.
They should also index all social assistance benefits and tax-delivered benefits and credits to inflation, to ensure that those benefits and credits don’t lose ground when costs increase with inflation.
Jurisdictions should also monitor whether food and shelter costs are rising faster than overall inflation and make adjustments accordingly.
[Slide 27: Recommendations (federal)]
Jennefer:
And as we’ve highlighted, the federal government could do a lot more to ensure that its role in income security is robust enough to make a real difference for people receiving social assistance in Canada.
First, the federal government should change the structure of the singles supplement in the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit so that the full Supplement amount goes to all low-income single adults.
This would provide a direct, immediate financial benefit to the millions of Canadian single adults who receive the lowest total incomes from social assistance and are living in the deepest poverty.
Second, as part of its National Housing Strategy and given the very low shelter benefits available from social assistance, the federal government should create a new direct transfer, like the Canada Renters Credit, to help with housing affordability now.
Third, they should make a number of fixes to the Canada Disability Benefit, one of which is to change eligibility rules so that anyone who qualifies for social assistance as a person with a disability in their province or territory receives the CDB automatically.
And, as listed on this slide, there are other policy levers they can use, including:
Increasing the amount of the Canada Social Transfer.
Expanding existing benefits.
And providing leadership on the right to an adequate standard of living by convening a national conversation about how to guarantee adequate total welfare incomes across the country.
[Slide 28: Thank you]
Jennefer:
Once again, thank you all very much for attending the webinar today.
We really appreciate your interest and attention.
And we look forward to hearing from you in the question and answer segment.
Now we’ll send it back to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth:
Thank you, Jennefer and Tania. That was great. It’s a comprehensive overview. Thank you so much and thank you for your work on this. This is an important contribution to the data that we need to make the case around adequacy in Canada on social assistance. There are a few questions in the Q&A box, so I’m going to go to a first one, just as a point of clarification. In our model example, family households, example households, someone who has a child with a disability, that is not calculated in the adequacy formula, is it? Just want to make that clear.
Jennefer:
No, that’s right. We don’t take that into account. And that would provide households with more income from a variety of sources.
Elizabeth:
Thank you. I just wanted to make that clear. I answered, but I wasn’t 100 per cent sure. I want to begin with John Stapleton’s question. He says, “I may be mistaken, but I think Canada might be the only rich nation where the federal government does not pay or participate in broad-based basic income security or housing benefits to the most vulnerable. CAP was in place from 1966 to 1996, but a social transfer broadly applied as the only replacement. Is this observation correct?” And I would just add onto that and segue a little bit to say, what is the federal government’s total share of welfare at this point, and how much do they actually provide? I don’t know, Jennefer, if that’s over to you.
Jennefer:
Sure. So, I don’t know either, John, whether Canada is the only or one of the only jurisdictions that doesn’t provide a universal benefit, but let’s have a look. You’ll see this in the policy brief that we released yesterday, and hopefully everyone’s got the link to that document that’s now on the website. We do this analysis every year, and that is, we track what the federal share versus the provincial and territorial share of total welfare incomes is in our given report year.
On the left-hand side here, we’ve got single adults and the CE, if you can see it down the bottom, represents considered employable people and WD is folks with a disability, and that’s for all the jurisdictions across the bottom. This slide on the right-hand side shows the situation for households with children. And you can see that the federal share for single people is only 2 to 7 per cent of total incomes, and that would be from the GST credit, and in 2025, from the remaining amount of the Canada Carbon Rebate.
But for households with children, the federal share is 28 to 43 per cent, and that’s because not only do they get additional benefits from the benefits that are provided, so for example, they get a larger amount of benefit from the GST credit, for example, they also get the Canada Child Benefit. Which, as we all know, has been a major contributor to reducing poverty and reducing the poverty gap for households with children for many years.
I’m glad that we’re talking about this because this is kind of the main theme of the webinar. To our estimation, the federal government has a lot of room to provide a lot more support for people receiving social assistance to increase their income so that they can get above the poverty line, particularly for these unattached singles, both those who are considered employable by the program and those who have a disability. Because that share, under 10 per cent, is, to our minds, woefully inadequate in terms of the federal response to poverty.
Elizabeth:
Right. Thank you, Jennefer. I know that the focus of the webinar is, in fact, on the federal role and income security. But I noted in the analysis that there are some jurisdictions that are doing better, where all of the example household types are doing better, and some where all are not, or actually doing worse. So can you just explain that to us or go over that a little bit?
Tania:
Sure, I will take this one. The largest jurisdictions are where people are falling further behind. We saw Alberta, BC, and Ontario doing worse. Nunavut also appeared among the worst. However, here we have a caveat. So doing the calculations to the term adequacy, we compare their total welfare incomes to an official poverty line that accounts for subsidized rents instead of non-subsidized rents. And that’s because most households receiving social assistance in Nunavut live in public subsidized housing. There, the subsidy is very high, so people’s actual rents are very low. But the subsidized rents data might be much higher than what we assume our example households are paying for rent, so this has the effect of overestimating the level of poverty in Nunavut. But we can’t dismiss how inadequate welfare incomes are in Nunavut. We know that the other costs are extremely high there and total welfare incomes are comparatively low.
So households in Nunavut, they do experience widespread poverty, but it might not just be quite as bad as we are showing with our calculations. And on the other side, we saw the Northwest Territories, the Yukon, PEI, and Quebec doing better, but we also have here one observation about Quebec. It looks like people are doing really well there, but actually it’s only for a small group receiving social assistance. I’m going to explain that really briefly.
In 2025, the only one of our example household types that had a total welfare income above the official poverty line was the unattached single considering employable receiving benefits for the Manpower Training, which is a stream under Quebec’s social assistance aim for employment program. And we know that only 2.6 per cent of unattached singles receiving social assistance in Canada receive benefits from this broader Aim for Employment program. So even fewer receive the Manpower stream. We shouldn’t generalize those results to most people receiving social assistance in Quebec.
Elizabeth:
Right, thank you. There are a couple of questions around the Canada Renters Credit. Alexi, are you online with us? Here’s the person who prepared the Canada Renters Credit. There are a couple of questions in this regard. One is whether or not the Canada Renters Credit includes two renters with a single income shared between them. Is that how we’re doing it?
Alexi:
Yeah, so the Renters Credit, so first of all, it scales by the size of the family. So, if there are two or more people in the family, then the amount would be higher. I think Jennefer mentioned the $200 maximum for a single, and then it would increase, not multiplied by the number of people, but by a factor related to the number of people in the family. And then the way that it’s modelled, much like other tax-based benefits, it uses the concept of adjusted family net income as the income level for calculating how much benefit somebody would receive.
It doesn’t have a phase-in, but it begins to phase out at a certain point based on the adjusted family net income. It would consider, in this case that is being proposed, it would consider the income of the person in the couple who’s working. And the phase-out would be based on that person’s income if the other person doesn’t have any income, but the total amount would be higher because it’s a couple versus a single person if that helps. There’s a lot more detail in the paper itself.
Elizabeth:
Yeah. So, for some of the other questions that came in on the Renters Credit, I would refer you to the report. Thank you to Alexi, who is the director at Maytree of our systems change team. Thank you. Was there any analysis, Jennefer or Tania, of what would happen if provinces stopped clawing back their benefits when the feds provide additional support? I’m thinking of AISH in Alberta or the CDB in particular.
Jennefer:
We don’t include the CDB in our calculations, and that’s because of the issue that we talked about, and that’s that it’s not a universal benefit. Our methodology assumes that once a person has filed their taxes and applied for social assistance, that they get the suite of provincial or territorial and federal credits and benefits that they would get automatically. And since the CDB requires an application for the disability tax credit and has a different definition of disability for the purposes of eligibility, we don’t include it in our calculations. I think in last year’s policy brief, we may have done some modelling about what the Canada Disability Benefit… It was either last year or the year before, you could have a look at that on our website, on the Maytree website. It would’ve been in the policy brief last year or the year before, to see what that would mean. Yeah, and we haven’t looked yet at the situation in Alberta with the change in the new program, so that will be coming in the 2026 report.
Elizabeth:
Thank you. We talked a bit about how the shelter allowance and the cost of one room in a rooming house or a single SRU, we haven’t talked about people who are unhoused. And that has been more and more in the news that they are certainly living at the sharpest edge of the housing crisis in the question of adequacy. We know that there are many people living in tents or encampments. What happens to them when they’re on social assistance? What is their status in terms of the shelter benefit?
Jennefer:
Let me show you another little table that we have. Great. So, we look at this issue in detail in the report, and I would encourage people to have a look at the key features section, which deals with a number of issues, including asset limits and income limits, and which benefits and credits are indexed in which jurisdictions. We look at this issue in the key features section, and typically in most provinces and territories, people who are unhoused and receiving social assistance are not eligible for shelter benefits. This is because of the needs-based nature of the program. So, if you have a need, then the program provides a benefit to you to help you to address that need. But if you don’t have a need, then the program won’t provide you with that benefit. So, when people are unhoused and they’re not paying rent, they don’t have a mortgage, they’re not paying rent, they don’t have a cost associated with housing.
In most instances, in most jurisdictions, they don’t get a benefit to pay for housing. So, this table illustrates that point. This is a comparison of benefit numbers for single adults considered employable in all the provinces and territories, depending on whether they’re housed or unhoused. And you can see that the total amounts provided to people who are unhoused are much less in every instance than the amounts that go to people who are housed. In a few jurisdictions, some level of shelter benefit is provided or the entire combined benefit is provided. But in most jurisdictions, people get significantly less in their monthly benefit than if they were housed, which leaves them really doubly disadvantaged.
Of course, there are many other supports that are provided by the provinces and territories through their social assistance system or by other parts of government. So, for example, the shelter system in many jurisdictions and other benefits, like paying for first month’s rent, for example. But in terms of their monthly income, people who are unhoused don’t get nearly the same level of support.
Elizabeth:
Okay. So, the exception there was Quebec, where you got the full amount. That was the only province or territory that was doing that. There have been a couple of questions… Sorry, go ahead.
Jennefer:
I was just going to say that was based on a court case that said that the government couldn’t discriminate based on housing status, housing.
Elizabeth:
And we’ve seen a recent court case in Nova Scotia as well, so we’ll see what difference that also makes. There have been a couple of questions about Quebec, actually, and the Manpower Training program. How extensive is that? What’s the percentage of recipients who are getting that, and do we have any sense of how effective it is in terms of people exiting the program into employment, or did we not go that deep in the data collection?
Jennefer:
Well, I’ll actually hand that over to Tania because that’s not really an issue that we look at in Welfare in Canada, but it is an issue that we look at in social assistance summaries, which Tania is the author of.
Tania:
Thanks, Jennefer. Unfortunately, we don’t have any more data than what I touched, like what I mentioned during the Q&A. The thing with the social assistance summaries is there’s another annual publication that Maytree does, and there we track the number of social assistance recipients across the country. And the way we gather the data is that we ask the provincial and territorial governments for the data. And what we have been doing in the last two years is trying to improve the data that we are collecting. So, we are considering asking them for the existing data to see how effective the programs are, but we didn’t start that yet. So, we have been thinking about asking that, but unfortunately, no, we don’t have data that is specific right now.
Elizabeth:
Okay, thank you. We’re coming close to the end of our time, but I think I’d like to prod both of you to think about some of the pathways for addressing some of this. We know that the economy is getting more difficult. Tariffs are looming. It’s going to mean that things are going to get much more expensive, and we know that the sharpest end of that is going to be felt by those who have the least, who are on income assistance and struggling as it is. What do we do about that? Where do we focus our advocacy? Where are the levers that we can be pulling, and what do we do?
Jennefer:
Yeah, I think it’s a scary time right now, and it’s a scary time, particularly for folks who are living on low incomes. But we saw governments really step up to the plate to respond to the impact of the economic threat that was posed by COVID-19. And I think governments can and should do the same here. The federal government has already released a billion-dollar package to support workers and businesses, but we really haven’t heard anything about supports for low-income people, whose costs are clearly going to rise as a result of the tariffs and the continuing trade war. Counter tariffs are going to drive up food prices and clothing prices, and those are the things that low-income people, particularly folks on social assistance, already spend a lot of money on relative to their total income. So they’re going to need help because the impact of higher prices is going to fall, as you say, disproportionately on them.
We just saw in the last, what day is it, in the last 24 hours, the new set of reciprocal tariffs come into effect, implemented by the Canadian government. And it makes a lot of sense for the government to take the proceeds from those counter tariffs and reinvest them to support all of those who are most impacted by the trade war. And of course, those who are most impacted are going to be people who are losing their jobs, people who aren’t getting hired, businesses who are not going to be able to have markets to sell their products to, but also low-income people whose costs are going to rise exponentially relative to their already very low and not increasing total welfare incomes.
Elizabeth:
Tania, did you want to add to that?
Tania:
Yeah, I would echo what Jennefer just shared and just include one more thing that we always discuss here on our pathways to deal with that, would be, I understand that we need a fast, quick response to the economic threat that low-income people will suffer, that everyone will suffer, but most of the people will be hit hardest. I would say that government needs to think about something like a fast response that might be easy to implement, but also think about permanent solutions, so not just transitory. And I think the path going into permanent income support would be essential.
Elizabeth:
I would just add, governments, it’s going to take all levels to fill the gap and to begin to make it possible for people to live with dignity, to have access to food security, to have housing, and so forth. We are at the end. There are still more questions. There are questions coming in on all kinds of things. There have been a number of comments on disability, and I think that they’re all really important. We’re capturing them, and so we will get back. And they’re not being lost because I think this is part of our discussion and our thinking going forward as we look at the unique experience of people with disabilities and how they’re able to navigate the benefits that are there, and how we can create better levers for that. I’m going to offer both Jennefer and Tania one final word, and then I’m going to say thank you and affirm what will happen next in terms of the slides and the presentation. Jennefer?
Jennefer:
Sure, thanks for that. I have been doing this report for many years, as you said off the top, and have been working in the social assistance policy and advocacy field for many years before that, and it always feels like nothing’s getting any better. I think that people who are doing work to advocate for better income supports for people receiving social assistance need to take heart. We did see, as I said earlier, during the COVID-19 pandemic, that government stepped up and saw the need and provided for that need, and that was based on broad-based need. And we’re entering another period where that broad-based need is going to be apparent, and so we need to be speaking up as much for the people receiving social assistance and living on low incomes as for other folks in our society and in our economy. So, continue the good work, people.
Tania:
And yeah, please use Welfare in Canada and the policy brief to spread the word on this topic and make it good. Yeah, thank you.
Elizabeth:
I want to say thank you to both of you. An extraordinary piece of work that happens every year. It’s heavy lifting, it’s a lot of data, it’s a lot of charts. And there were many hands on it, but particular thanks to Tania and Jennefer. Terrific work. Thank you to everybody who’s been on the call today. There were great questions, important questions, and I know that so many on this call are active advocates, and we need to figure this out together to figure out how we ensure that people’s social and economic rights are effectively protected.