Canada Disability Benefit

The Canada Disability Benefit (CDB) will provide monthly payments of up to $200 (indexed to inflation) to individuals with disabilities aged between 18 and 64. The amount will vary based on the income and marital status of the recipients and their spouses, if applicable. Eligibility for the benefit begins in June 2025, with payments starting in July 2025.

The PBO estimates that this measure will cost $6.5 billion from 2025-26 to 2029-30.

• Estimates are presented on an accrual basis as would appear in the budget and public accounts.
• A positive number implies a deterioration in the budgetary balance (lower revenues or higher spending). A negative number implies an improvement in the budgetary balance (higher revenues or lower spending).
• Totals may not add due to rounding

PBO used its model of the Canada Disability Benefit (CDB) to project the program costs. The model used data from Statistics Canada’s 2017 Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD) and updated Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) data on disability tax credit (DTC) certificates to estimate take-up rates for CDB benefits. The CSD data was linked to income data from the 2017 T1 Family File, which were used to calculate the benefit reduction amounts of each recipient.

Statistics Canada’s Social Policy Simulation Database/Model (SPSD/M)[^1] and PBO’s Election Proposal Costing (EPC) baseline were used to project income growth and inflation. Historical growth in the number of working-age DTC certificate holders was used to scale the projected take-up rates into future years. Administrative cost was assumed to be 2 per cent of benefit cost, as was done in PBO’s 2023 CDB report.

The main sources of uncertainty relate to the data and assumptions for CDB take-up, as well as the growth of CDB take-up over the projection period. There is also uncertainty around the projections of income, disability severity, and inflation.