For a young person who wants to obtain a diploma, a financial boost can make all the difference in the world. This is why Ottawa pays children from disadvantaged families up to $2,000 for their post-secondary studies. But the most vulnerable, those whom the Youth Protection Directorate (DPJ) removes from their families, stop receiving this precious subsidy as soon as they pack their bags.
This rather hard-to-believe scenario happened to Tony’s two children, placed in foster care. Looking at his Scotiabank account statements, the father realized that the Canada Learning Bond (CLB) was no longer being paid into the RESPs (registered education savings plans) he opened.
The BEC is an amount automatically deposited into the RESPs of children growing up in poor families. Over the years, CLBs can total $2,000, not including any accrued interest. Parents do not need to contribute to the account themselves for their offspring to receive the amount. The program, little known and underutilized, has existed for two decades.
Even though he lost custody of his boys, Tony continues to religiously transfer $208 per month into their RESP. He finds that Ottawa should also continue to do its part. “They’re really dirty,” he blurted. The government justifies this stop by a nebulous history of SIN which does not “correspond with that of the ARC”, I read on the statement.
Employment and Social Development Canada confirmed to me that this is not an error.
As soon as a child enters the child protection system, “payments from the BEC to the RESP opened by the parent(s) will be interrupted,” a spokesperson wrote to me without explaining the logic behind it. this decision.
The solution, according to the federal government: for the DPJ to open a second RESP for the child. The BEC will then be paid there. The DPJ can even request retroactive payment of the missing sums, it is argued. And, when a child placed in a foster family or youth center has never had an RESP in his life, the DPJ can open one for him for the first time.
Ottawa says it has sent a note to the provinces to “help them understand the steps to follow to open RESPs for children in care.” The Quebec Ministry of Health and Social Services wrote to me that it had sent “a reminder on this subject” to the province’s DYPs in 2021.
So we have everything planned out, in theory. But in practice, it’s something else.
These messages did nothing.
The DYPs that I contacted, particularly the largest ones in Quebec, told me that their workers do not go to the bank to open RESPs. There may be exceptions, but if so, Quebec is not aware of them. A source close to the DPJ even wonders if this would not contravene the confidentiality rules surrounding children removed from their environment.
Overworked, the DPJ staff has many other priorities, of course. It first tackles emergencies and must, above all, quickly take care of neglected or abused children. This is completely logical and understandable.
But it is still shocking that nothing has been done, for so many years, to ensure that these highly vulnerable children are not deprived of a federal grant created especially for them, for their future. These young people, for the most part, will not have the chance to have their school fees paid by mom and dad. An RESP containing $2,500 or $4,000 could have the potential to make a big difference in their progress.
As my colleague Katia Gagnon recently reported, a third of young people who have been placed under the supervision of the DPJ find themselves, at the age of 21, in a sort of professional dead end.1. They are neither in school, nor in training, nor at work. This is three times more than in the general population at the same age.
To get an idea of the scale of the phenomenon, I asked the Ministry of Health how many children in Quebec were currently placed outside of their family environment, and how many have been, over the past 20 years. These data are unknown.
One thing is certain, it is not as rare as one might think.
Last fall, Katia taught us that one in twenty children in the province will be placed during their lifetime2. The statistics include one-day placements as well as those lasting 5 or 12 years. But the overall placement rate could, in fact, be higher, because the statistics only take into account placements occurring after a first report. Those occurring after several reports are not counted.
The good news is that Ottawa intends to systematically open RESPs to disadvantaged children starting in 20283. Because its BEC program misses the target. No less than 70% of eligible young people do not benefit from it, or 130,000 each year.
As it has done for 20 years to pay BEC to children, the federal government will base itself on the income declared to the tax authorities by parents to establish the list of minors eligible for this new automatic system.
It would be unacceptable if this promising process excluded children from the DPJ.
1. Read the article “The third party in a professional cul-de-sac, according to a new study”
2. Read the article “An Unprecedented Study”
3. Read the column “Up to $2,000 automatically paid to children”
IQEE and CESG
Revenu Québec confirmed to me that it continues to pay the Quebec education savings incentive (IQEE) to eligible children, whether or not they are placed by the DPJ outside their family. The IQEE is equivalent to 10% of the net contributions paid by parents during the year. Ottawa did not tell me if its Canada Education Savings Grant (CESG) of 20% to 40% depending on family income continued to be paid.