Politics·Video

Trudeau says Canada Child Benefit will help families

New Canada Child Benefit program payments start today with higher payments for low-income families

Trudeau pitches Child Benefit money

8 years ago
Duration 2:02
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says funds from the Canada Child Benefit program, the first of which were sent out today, have the potential to pull 300,000 children out of poverty.

The following is a transcript of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's remarks:

You go to soccer practice on Tuesday night and the cleats fit, but you get to the game on Saturday morning and all of a sudden you're scrambling to find the closest Canadian Tire with fingers crossed that they have the next size up. Unfortunately, for too many Canadian families things like new shoes and healthy groceries and summer camp and class trips are a real strain on the family budget. 

And if you're struggling to make it into the middle class it's even harder. 

Today we've delivered on our promise. The first payments of the new Canada Child Benefit have now been made and I want to spend a moment to talk about what this means for Canadian families. For families like Genevieve and her two beautiful children, William and Nicola. Genevieve is a single mom. She earns less than $50,000 a year. This year, William is going into Grade 2 and Nicola is starting kindergarten. It's an exciting time for the family but it also means double the back-to-school costs. 

So that she can work and so the kids can have a fun summer, both Nicola and William are enrolled in a day camp over these months. That's an additional expense. And I talked about soccer earlier. William plays at his school. It's less expensive than a private club but there are still extra costs for Genevieve to pay. All of these little things, things that we do to make sure that our kids have great childhoods, they add up. 

And for someone like Genevieve who's already finding it tough to make ends meet, a more generous and tax-free benefit like the CCB will make a real difference. For Genevieve and her family the CCB means $848 each and every month tax free, starting today.