As a part of the Federal Government's Pre-Budget Consultations in advance of Budget 2026, SPT put forward the following recommendations with a focus on income supports, housing affordability, and other poverty reduction measures. Submissions closed on May 22, 2026. The full budget will be announced in fall 2026.
Summary of Recommendations
Recommendation 1: Increase the adequacy and accessibility of the Canada Disability Benefit
Recommendation 2: Create a new Canada Child Benefit End Child Poverty Supplement targeted to families with low income
Recommendation 3: Introduce a permanent, Canada-wide housing benefit system to help people move out of homelessness and increase stability for lower-income renters
Recommendation 4: Recommit to the right to adequate housing and take action to curb the financialization of housing
Recommendation 5: Advance the next phase of the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care program
Recommendation 6: Increase investment in and expand access to the National School Food Program
2026 Federal Pre-Budget Submission: Investments Needed to Increase Income Security and Address the Affordability Crisis
The federal government has repeatedly described this moment as one requiring generational investments to restore affordability, strengthen communities, and build a stronger Canada. Meeting that promise means making substantial progress on reducing poverty and supporting low-income residents. In Canada, 11% of the population experiences poverty according to Canada’s official poverty line—the Market Basket Measure (MBM). Using the broader Low-Income Measure After-Tax (LIM-AT), 12.5% of residents experience poverty. These rates are even higher among those who are Indigenous, racialized, immigrants, as well as people with disabilities.
Reducing poverty requires addressing affordability from two angles: lowering the cost of essential goods and services and strengthening income security. Families cannot achieve stability if housing, food, child care, transportation and other basic needs remain unaffordable. At the same time, when wages, benefits, and income supports are too low to cover the necessities, the pathways out of poverty become inaccessible.
Fortunately, the Government of Canada has the tools and fiscal capacity to tackle the root causes of poverty. For the 2026 federal budget, Social Planning Toronto calls for investments in five critical areas to strengthen economic security for low-income residents and ease the financial pressures facing families.
Detailed Recommendations
1. Increase the adequacy and accessibility of the Canada Disability Benefit
People with disabilities continue to experience poverty at unacceptable rates. Disability Without Poverty and Campaign 2000’s 2025 Disability Poverty Report Card found that 16% (1.5 million) of people with disabilities lived in poverty in 2023, as measured by the LIM-AT. This is significantly higher than the rate among non-disabled people (9.5%).
In 2023, Canada took a historic step toward addressing disability poverty by introducing the Canada Disability Benefit (CDB). Regretfully, at $200 per month, the CDB is not enough to lift people above the poverty line in any province or territory.
To make matters more challenging, eligibility for the CDB is tied to the Canada Disability Tax Credit (DTC). The Disability Tax Credit has very limited uptake: only 14.6% of persons with disabilities claimed the DTC. People with disabilities face significant barriers to accessing the DTC and as a result may miss out on other benefits they are entitled to, including the Canada Disability Benefit.
Therefore we recommend that Budget 2026:
- Set the CDB at or above the Market Basket Measure (MBM) poverty line.
- Index benefit levels to inflation annually and ensure it reflects the real cost of disability.
- Create alternative pathways to access the Canada Disability Benefit.
2. Create a new Canada Child Benefit End Child Poverty Supplement targeted to families with low income
Despite federal commitments to end child poverty, nearly 1.4 million children (18.3%) in Canada struggle to make ends meet, based on the LIM-AT. This rate is even higher in Toronto, where poverty affects one in four families (25.7%).
Campaign 2000’s 2025 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada found that in 2023 poverty rose for the third consecutive year, with nearly 30,000 additional children falling into poverty. Rates are now approaching levels last seen in 2017, signalling an erosion of the gains made after the introduction of the Canada Child Benefit in 2016.
Growing up in poverty can have lasting impacts on children’s health, education, and long-term opportunities, potentially reinforcing cycles of disadvantage across generations.
Therefore we recommend that Budget 2026:
- Introduce a new supplement to the Canada Child Benefit (CCB), targeted to families in low income as modelled in the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative’s forthcoming Alternative Federal Budget 2026. The proposed End Child Poverty Supplement (ECPS) would provide up to $8,500 for the first child in families earning under $19,000, with scaled reductions for each additional child regardless of age.
3. Introduce a permanent, Canada-wide housing benefit system to help people move out of homelessness and increase stability for lower-income renters
Canada is facing a housing crisis marked by record-high home prices, surging rents, and a severe supply shortage. Renters, particularly those on low-income, are more severely affected, often living in unaffordable housing and having to choose between paying rent and meeting other basic needs.
Insufficient income is also contributing to homelessness across Canada. According to Canada’s most recent point-in-time count of homelessness conducted in 2020-2022, 40,000 people experienced homelessness, roughly a 20% increase from 2018. Among respondents, insufficient income was the most commonly cited reason for recent housing loss.
While the current Canada Housing Benefit (CHB) helps to address some of these concerns, inconsistency across jurisdictions on the design and administration, insufficient funding to meet needs, and an unclear accountability framework has limited the impact of the program. The CHB is also set to expire in 2028, and in the absence of a new program or the extension of CHB, as many as 330,000 households could be at risk of losing support.
For these reasons, Canada needs to ensure income security as a critical tool for bringing stability to low-income renters and addressing growing homelessness.
Therefore we recommend that Budget 2026:
- Lay the foundation for a national housing benefit standard that largely mirrors the design of Manitoba’s Rent Assist program, as proposed by Maytree. This involves the development of a permanent, entitlement-based, portable housing benefit that provides low-income renters with the difference between 30% of their household’s income and 80% of the median market rent (for the unit size needed) in their province's most populous region.
- Until a permanent national housing benefit system has been designed and implemented, increase investment in the Canada Housing Benefit and commit to multi-year funding agreements.
4. Recommit to the right to adequate housing and take action to curb the financialization of housing
In 2019, Parliament passed the National Housing Strategy Act which recognized the human right to adequate housing in federal legislation and committed Canada to the progressive realization of that right. Since then, the government has maintained its National Housing Strategy and introduced a range of housing initiatives and programs. However, these programs are not always clearly grounded in a human rights approach.
While rent and home ownership costs remain out of reach for many Canadians, corporate and private actors continue to profit from the financialization of housing. This clear contradiction works against the government’s commitment to the human right to housing which requires housing to be treated as a social good and a fundamental human right, not a commodity to be profited from.
It is estimated that nearly 20 percent of purpose-built rental stock in Canada are owned by financialized landlords. As housing is increasingly treated as an investment vehicle, tenants can face rising rents, greater risk of eviction and displacement, poor maintenance, and declining living conditions. These impacts are felt most acutely by marginalized groups, such as seniors, low-income tenants, people with disabilities, Black individuals, and many others.
Therefore we recommend that Budget 2026:
- Establish an explicit process and timeline to embed a human rights-based approach across all housing programs, including Build Canada Homes and the National Housing Strategy. This includes prioritizing those with greatest needs in housing programs beginning with accelerated investments in deeply affordable, supportive, and bridge housing; setting clear targets and indicators for measuring progress; and ensuring that people with lived/living experience of homelessness and housing precarity are meaningfully involved in the design and implementation of programs.
- Establish and implement a national homelessness strategy within the National Housing Strategy, grounded in the human right to adequate housing and recognizing that people experiencing homelessness are among those furthest from having this right realized.
- Implement, and report on the progress of, the recommendations of the 2022 report commissioned by the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate, the Financialization Of Housing In Canada. This includes, for example, expanding non-market housing, tax reform, creating corporate limits, and more as detailed in the report.
5. Advance the next phase of the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care program
Child care remains an important anti-poverty policy tool. Affordable, accessible child care enables parents—particularly women and one-parent families—to participate in paid employment and improve household income.
The introduction of the Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care (CWELCC) program has been an essential step toward addressing child care affordability. However, the program continues to struggle to meet demand and fulfill its promise of $10-a-day care.
In Ontario, eligible fees remain at an average of $19 per day, and the province signed only a one-year extension after unresolved funding concerns with the federal government. The extension maintains current fee levels through 2026, but it does not provide a long-term solution for affordability, expansion, or system sustainability.
Therefore we recommend that Budget 2026:
- Adequately fund the next five-year phase of the CWELCC program, including both operational and capital funding, to ensure that the vision for $10-a-day child care is achieved.
- Ensure that the CWELCC program is built in line with its core principles: expansion must occur through public and non-profit services; affordable parent fees should be delivered through a universal approach; supply-side operational funding should be put in place; child care workforce issues must be addressed; and commitments to high-quality child care must be upheld.
6. Increase investment in and expand access to the National School Food Program
The reach of poverty is also reflected in rates of food insecurity. In 2025, 24.0% of people in Canada experienced food insecurity, representing approximately 9.8 million people, including 2.4 million children. In Toronto, the number of children relying on food banks has increased by 154% since 2019, and children now make up one in four food bank users in the city.
Recognizing that no student should learn on an empty stomach, Budget 2025 made the National School Food Program permanent, saving families roughly $800 per year in grocery costs. Although the National School Food Program, first announced in 2024, aims to provide meals to up to 400,000 more students per year, beyond the estimated 2 million already served by existing programs, this still falls short of a universal program and reaches only a portion of Canada’s school-aged population.
Therefore we recommend that Budget 2026:
- Increase investment in and expand access to the National School Food Program to ensure that all children and youth have access to free, nutritious food at school.
Time to Change the Trajectory
In 2018, the federal government introduced Opportunity for All: Canada’s First Poverty Reduction Strategy. This strategy set forward the concrete targets of reducing poverty by 20% by 2020 and 50% by 2030 based on 2015 levels and measured by the Market Basket Measure. Up until 2021 Canada was making significant progress towards its poverty reduction goals. However, recent analysis using the 2024 Canadian Income Survey found that Canada is no longer on track to achieve its 2030 goal.
But it’s not too late to change the trajectory. Beginning with meaningful investments in income supports and affordability measures, the 2026 federal budget can create a clear plan to achieve Canada’s poverty reduction targets.
About Social Planning Toronto
Social Planning Toronto is a nonprofit community organization dedicated to community development and social justice. Our organization conducts social research, policy analysis, community capacity building, and resident engagement to reduce inequities. We strive for an equitable, inclusive, and accessible Toronto—shaped by the diversity of its residents and rooted in social and economic justice.