Putting More Money Back Into Parents’ Pockets
Taking immediate action to help families who have faced new pressures and expenses due to the pandemic
Our aim, during these extraordinarily challenging times, is to continue supporting those impacted hardest by the COVID-19 outbreak — Ontario families.
COVID-19 has imposed many costs on families in this province, which is why, for the third time, our PC government is providing financial support by placing funds directly in the pockets of working parents. Through the COVID-19 Child Benefit, the government is providing $980 million in direct payments to parents. Under this new round of funding, payments will be doubled to $400 per child and $500 for a child with special needs to help offset additional learning costs.
The program will be providing real and meaningful financial relief for families to help offset additional learning costs, whether their children attend school in person, online or a mix of both.
This investment in families builds on the over $860 million provided to parents since the start of the pandemic through the original Support for Learners and Support for Families Program. For example, an Ontario family with three children, including one with special needs, would receive $2600 this past year to help cover the costs of an accessible workspace and technology to enable learning online.
In total, since the start of the pandemic, our PC government has provided $1.8 billion in direct support to parents across the province.
We’re also making child care more affordable and helping parents get back into the workforce by proposing a 20 per cent enhancement of the CARE tax credit for 2021 that would help parents with the cost of child care. This would increase support from $1,250 to $1,500, on average, providing about $75 million in additional support for the child care expenses of over 300,000 families.
We remain committed to helping parents and families with the unprecedented challenges they are facing this school year.