Federal Support for Low Income Individuals and Families

In 2016, the Government committed to developing a poverty reduction strategy. To support parliamentarians in their deliberations regarding this strategy, the Parliamentary Budget Officer initiated a census of all existing federal support and services to low income Canadians and vulnerable groups. Overall, we identified 75 federal initiatives that provide roughly $57 billion of financial support or services to people with low income and other vulnerable groups in 2017-18—55 programs with expenditures of $39.3 billion and 20 tax expenditures that provided $17.5 billion.