Ten things to know about social assistance in Canada

I’ve just written a blog post about social assistance in Canada. Points raised in the blog post include the following:

-Social assistance has two contradictory objectives: 1) to give people enough money to live on; and 2) to not give people enough money to live on.

-Very few immigrants receive social assistance (relative to the general population).

-Several Canadian provinces have seen a rise in persons with disabilities receiving social assistance.

-The inadequacy in social assistance coverage and benefit levels puts a strain on other parts of Canada’s social welfare system (e.g., social housing).

-When a person applies to receive social assistance but is denied, no systematic effort is made to track what happens to that person.

-Recent research suggests that a modest increase in social assistance benefit levels would likely reduce demand for emergency shelter beds.

The full blog post is available at this link.