Question Period Note: RELEASE OF 2023 CANADIAN INCOME SURVEY DATA

Release of income, poverty and food insecurity statistics from the 2023 Canadian Income Survey

• The latest release of the Canadian Income Survey shows that Canada’s overall poverty rate was 10.2% in 2023, similar to the pre-pandemic level.
• Between 2015 and 2023, there were 1.1 million fewer Canadians living in poverty, including more than 300,000 fewer children. This represents a 30% decrease in poverty compared to 2015 (14.5%), the baseline year for Canada’s legislated poverty reduction targets. 
• The Government remains committed to reducing poverty and meeting our poverty reduction targets. Meeting these targets will require new efforts geared towards enhancing economic growth and helping those who need additional income supports.

Canadian Income Survey (CIS)
• The 2023 Canadian Income Survey (CIS) is the eleventh cycle of the survey since 2012, when it replaced the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID). The CIS is administered by Statistics Canada and is currently the official data source for annual income, poverty and food insecurity statistics.
• The CIS is conducted nationwide in both the provinces and the territories. However, it excludes the population living on-reserve, the institutionalized population and households in extremely remote areas with very low population density. These exclusions amount to less than 2 percent of the overall population.
• CIS data are usually released with a 16-month lag. The latest CIS data available is for the 2023 reference year and was released in May of 2025.
Canada’s Official Poverty Line
• The Poverty Reduction Act (2019) established the Market Basket Measure (MBM) as Canada’s Official Poverty Line and requires it to be reviewed, on a regular basis as determined by Statistics Canada. Reviews of the MBM ensure that it reflects the up-to-date cost of a basket of goods and services representing a modest, basic standard of living.
• The MBM establishes poverty thresholds based on the total cost of basket components, which include food, shelter, clothing, transportation and other expenses. These thresholds vary across different regions and can be adjusted to reflect families of different sizes. If a person’s or family’s disposable income is below their applicable threshold, they would be considered to live in poverty.
• Disposable income for the purposes of the MBM is based on total income (including government transfers) after deducting not only income taxes but also several non-discretionary expenditures such as EI and CPP/QPP contributions, child care expenses and direct medical expenses. It also takes into account the financial impacts of different housing tenure types such as mortgage-free home ownership and subsidized rental housing.
• The current MBM establishes thresholds for 53 different geographic regions in the provinces, including 19 major cities, and 13 geographic regions in Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
• The Poverty Reduction Act (2019) established poverty reduction targets based on Canada’s Official Poverty Line: a 20% reduction in poverty by 2020, and a 50% reduction by 2030, compared to 2015 levels.
Canada’s Official Poverty Line in the Territories

• The Northern Market Basket Measure or MBM-N for Yukon and Northwest Territories - Canada’s Official Poverty Line for these two territories - is comprised of the same five major basket components (i.e. food, shelter, clothing, transportation and other expenses) as the MBM methodology for the provinces, with some differences to reflect the realities of life in Canada’s North. For example, the shelter component does not include a supplement for appliance costs and the transportation component estimates only private transportation costs (includes no costs for public transportation).
• The MBM-N for Nunavut (Nunavut MBM-N) establishes poverty thresholds based on the cost of a basket that includes the same five components present in the other MBM methodologies (i.e., food, clothing, shelter, transportation, and other expenses) with the addition of a separate “Inuusiqattiarniq” component. This component captures the costs associated with the preservation of Inuit knowledge, culture, traditions and way of life, and is only applied to Indigenous families.
• In addition, to reflect the fact that families in Nunavut are on average larger and younger than elsewhere in Canada, the size of the MBM reference family for the Nunavut MBM-N was increased from 4 to 5 persons by adding a four-year-old child.
• CIS coverage of the territorial population is approximately 96% for the Northwest Territories, 93% for Nunavut and 94% for Yukon. Households in remote areas with very low population density are excluded from the survey due to data collection challenges. In comparison, the CIS covers 98% of the population living in the provinces.

The Third Comprehensive Review of the MBM
• The Third comprehensive review of the MBM was jointly launched by Statistics Canada and Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) in June of 2023. Similar to previous comprehensive reviews, the Third Comprehensive Review of the MBM is a joint effort by Statistics Canada and ESDC, with input from a variety of stakeholders across Canada. The proposed changes to the MBM methodology and a provisional 2023-base for the MBM were released in May of 2025. The review is expected to end in the fall of 2025 with the release of the official 2023-base of the MBM.
• The periodic review and update of the MBM methodology ensures that Canadians can be confident that poverty is measured and reported using an approach that is up-to-date, transparent and informed by a diversity of stakeholders.

Additional 2023 CIS Results
Overall Poverty
• The poverty rate in Canada has followed an overall downward trend since 2015, going from 14.5% in 2015 to 10.2% in 2023. The provinces with the highest poverty rates in 2023 were Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan at 12.9%, while Quebec had the lowest rate at 7.4%. Between 2022 and 2023, the largest absolute increase in poverty rates was observed in Saskatchewan (an increase of 1.8 percentage points), while poverty rates also increased noticeably in Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island (1.7 and 1.5 percentage point increase, respectively).

Median Incomes
• The median after-tax income of Canadian families and unattached individuals increased slightly from $73,300 in 2022 to $74,200 in 2023 – a 1.2% increase (in constant 2023 dollars).
o The median for families increased from $103,700 in 2022 to $104,800 in 2023.
o The median for unattached individuals increased from $39,300 in 2022 to $40,000 in 2023.
• In terms of median after-tax income for families and unattached individuals across provinces, Saskatchewan had the largest decrease in 2023, going from $74,900 in 2022 to $72,800 in 2023 (-$2,100). Conversely, Alberta observed the largest increase, going from $86,000 in 2022 to $88,500 in 2023 (+$2,500).

Income Inequality
• The Gini coefficient is an index that takes a value ranging from 0, which indicates a state of perfect equality, to 1, which indicates a state of perfect inequality. Canada’s Gini coefficient based on adjusted after-tax income increased from 0.288 in 2021 to 0.300 in 2022,and remained at 0.300 in 2023.

Rising cost of living / food insecurity: 
• The Government recognizes that many Canadians are concerned about higher costs of living and new challenges to Canada’s future economic growth. The Government is also aware of rising food insecurity across the country.
• The Government is committed to maintain and expand measures to make life more affordable.