The persistence and depth of poverty that people receiving social assistance must endure as a consequence of very low total welfare incomes has been documented in the Welfare in Canada report series and its predecessors for nearly forty years. As the only publicly available resource that compiles and analyses this data, the annual 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.1 The 2023 edition of the report examines the total welfare incomes of example households receiving social assistance in all 13 provincial and territorial jurisdictions in Canada looking at total amounts, adequacy, and trends over time.2 The report also includes data on several key features of social assistance programs, including indexation of benefits and tax credits to inflation, asset levels and income exemptions that determine eligibility, and the structure of basic benefits. In this policy brief, we expand on the analysis presented in the 2023 report.
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