Father cradling newborn baby in nursery. (Dann Tardif/Getty Images)
If there’s one transformative policy in Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s first budget, it’s the new Canada Child Benefit. Liberals campaigned hard on an overhaul of the last government’s approach to helping parents with kids, and they’re calling their CCB “the most significant policy innovation in a generation,” and “a plan to help families more than any other social program since universal health care.”
Nine out of 10 families will, according to government calculations, get bigger monthly cheques than a suite of child benefits delivered to families during Stephen Harper’s time in office. The program, it’s claimed, will “lift hundreds of thousands of kids up from poverty.”
Putting aside the lofty rhetoric behind the Liberals sales pitch for the CCB, the real question facing Canadian families is: Are you better off? How does the new, non-taxable program stack up against the payouts from the former (and taxable) Universal Child Care Benefit and Canada Child Tax Benefit?
Use this calculator to determine an estimate of how much those defunct programs helped your family—and what you can expect the CCB to deposit in your bank account.