Many kids on reserves missing child benefit
Cheques worth up to $533 per child not sent to parents who haven’t filed tax returns
The first monthly Canada child benefit cheques, worth up to $533 per child, went out to more than 3 million homes Wednesday.
But because 18-year-old Chantal Perrault has never filed a tax return, her 5-month-old baby Harlow is missing out.
“Wow, that is a lot of money. It would buy a lot of baby formula,” she said in a phone interview from Red Gut First Nation reserve near Fort Frances, Ont., where she lives in band housing with Harlow’s father, grandparents and two cousins.
Perrault is among thousands of indigenous parents on reserves who don’t regularly file tax returns, and therefore aren’t eligible to receive the income-based benefit aimed at lifting about 300,000 Canadian children out of poverty. The benefit is expected to help about 8,000 indigenous children escape poverty. But 16,000 would be helped if all parents on reserve filed their taxes, The Ca- nadian Press reported.
Indigenous children are twice as likely to live in poverty as non-Aboriginal kids, according to a recent study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, which found poverty rates among First Nations children on reserves are about 60 per cent.
Canada Revenue Agency doesn’t track the percentage of tax filers on reserve, but a 2010 study put the number as high as 50 per cent.
Families with net annual incomes below $30,000 receive the maximum $6,400 a year for each child under age 6 and $5,400 per child for those from age 6 through 17. Government departments are working together to create greater awareness of federal benefits and to held individuals file taxes, said a spokesman for Families, Children and Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos, who is in charge of the program.
“Minister Duclos has discussed this issue with indigenous leaders and has asked Service Canada to reach out to indigenous communities to support access to needed documents,” Mathieu Filion added, referring to social insurance numbers and birth certificates.