FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 8th, 2025
Vancouver, BC: Child and family advocacy organizations are raising urgent concerns about the British Columbia government’s decision to discontinue the BC Family Benefit Bonus as of July 1, 2025. The bonus was in place from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025. The timing of this cut — during the summer when school-based and other supports are unavailable — is particularly damaging for low-income families and those accessing income and disability assistance already struggling with record inflation and skyrocketing housing and food costs.
“This decision comes at the worst possible time,” said Adrienne Montani, Executive Director of First Call Child and Youth Advocacy Society. “Families are facing extraordinary cost pressures. Reducing this support just as children are out of school — and school meals and other services are unavailable — leaves thousands of kids more vulnerable to hunger and hardship.”
The amount of lost income will vary by family size and income. According to internal calculations, the now-cancelled BC Family Benefit Bonus provided as much as $713 annually to a low-income family with two children. Losing this income directly translates into greater hardship for households already living below or near the poverty line.
“The BC government is effectively reversing progress on child poverty, especially for lone-parent households that face some of the highest poverty rates in the province,” said Viveca Ellis, Executive Director of the Centre for Family Equity. “Direct income supports like this are among the most effective ways lift families and children out of poverty. Their removal is regressive, short-sighted, and harmful.”
The BC Family Benefit, combined with the Canada Child Benefit, helped lift over 57,000 BC children out of poverty in 2022, as noted in First Call’s 2024 BC Child Poverty Report Card, as the province’s child poverty rate rose 26% between 2020 and 2022.
Wendy Graves, a Centre for Family Equity member and lone parent raising a child on disability assistance in Chilliwack, will lose access to important benefits. “The bonus helped us so much. Expenses that are hard to budget for were often accessible with the extra money, like shoes or an oil change for my wheelchair van. These costs are out of reach for us now.”
First Call and the Centre for Family Equity call on Premier David Eby and Finance Minister Brenda Bailey to immediately reinstate the BC Family Benefit Bonus and to strengthen — not weaken — income supports that help families through tough times.
Children should not be paying the price for provincial budget decisions. First Call and Centre for Family Equity urge the government to reverse this cut, increase the BC Family Benefit in Budget 2026, and recommit to its poverty reduction goals.
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