Pressures from rising tuition costs have threatened the ability for low-income Canadians to take part in post-secondary education, but an upcoming change to Canada Learning Bonds (CLB) is aiming to address some of that challenge.
Starting in 2028, the Government of Canada will begin to automatically enrol families into the CLB program—a change that came about as a result of policy work that happened in Calgary.
As a result, starting in 2028, children born after 2024 will automatically be enrolled into the CLB program which grants up to $2,000 for post-secondary education. Additionally, changes will allow young adults up to the age of 30 to retroactively obtain the benefits of the bond.
Jeff Loomis, Executive Director of Momentum, said that his organization had been pushing for the change for the past several years after the success of the now wrapping up LearnSmart program.
“We know that education is a direct gateway for people to earn more money. There’s great research that shows that even certain levels of post-secondary education lead to people earning more money over their lifetime. We also know that children or young people with an education savings account are 50 per cent more likely to attend some level of post-secondary education,” Loomis said.
“So, that’s why for many years, with community partners, we were working to increase the uptake of education savings, and in particular, the Canada Learning Bond, which is the federal grant that’s targeted for families or young people living on low incomes.”
He said that Momentum, along with organizations like Aspire and the Calgary Immigrant Women’s Association (CIWA) had been promoting the use of LearnSmart, which helped low-income Calgarians whose parents did not put money into a Registered Education Savings Plan, retroactively obtain a CLB grant.
Through Momentum’s overall work to encourage education savings that qualified individuals for CLBs over the past decade, Loomis said that Calgary had become one of the cities with the highest rates of use of the bonds.
“[From] about 2008 to 2020, we actually worked to increase the uptake from the Canada Learning Bond from 20 per cent of eligible families receiving the count every month to over 50 per cent, which actually made Calgary one of the highest rates of any municipality in Canada for the Canada Learning Bond,” he said.
According to a report produced by Momentum in 2021, based on data provided by the Government of Canada, participation in the CLB program in Calgary grew from 4 per cent in 2008 to 10 per cent in 2020 above the national average of participation. That gap also grew from 2 per cent over Edmonton to 7 per cent over the same time period.
“We really started to think about, well, there’s only half still have the kids and young people in our city that are eligible for the Canada Learning Bond were receiving it. So that really pushed us to like how could we really significantly continue to increase that uptake and mass and we shifted to doing policy work,” said Loomis.
Impact to affect hundreds of thousands of Canadian students
He said that the number of Canadians impacted by the policy change would be significant, with approximately 130,000 students who would have not been able to access the CLB now getting that money for post-secondary education.
That change to access is likely to be life-changing—as evidenced by the success of the LearnSmart program in Calgary.
SAIT Business Administration student Daniel Olufowobi was one of those students who was retroactively able to take advantage of the CLB.
He said that there was the benefit of not only helping himself cover the cost of education, but it also meant that his friends would be able to continue with their educations as well.
“I actually recommended it to a couple of my friends who we’re not planning to go into post-secondary because I learned about the learning bond in late July. They already decided they were not able to go to post-secondaries. So when I found out about it, I told him about what I discovered, and luckily, he is also planning to start this next fall,” Olufowobi said.
Loomis said that was exactly the kind of thing that Momentum was hoping for when they pushed for the policy to be changed at the federal level.
“The even bigger impact is that because post-secondary education, at any level, not just University, does contribute to increased lifetime earnings, we will see a significant change towards greater intergenerational poverty reduction, as well as contributing to boosting our future workforce in Canada,” he said.
Helping low-income Calgarians access the new CLB program would continue to be a priority for Momentum, he said.
“Because it’s very, very important that people know about the benefit of the CLB, even if it is more auto-enrolment, the big thing that we will continue to work on with our partners is filing taxes, so that people then will get enrolled for things like the Canada Learning Bond,” Loomis said.
“That’s still the key leverage point, is for people to make sure they’re filing their taxes.”
