DCHP-3

Family Allowance

DCHP-2 (Oct 2016)

Spelling variants:
family allowance

n. — historical, Administration

a monthly allowance paid to the parents or guardians of children under 18 years of age.

Type: 4. Culturally Significant — This federal program, begun in 1945, was Canada's first universal social program (see Canadian Encyclopedia reference). It was replaced in 1992 by the Canada Child Tax Benefit, into which other child support programs were consolidated (see Canadian Encyclopedia reference). As with other legal name changes, the older name continues to be used, as the quotations demonstrate. Other informal names include baby bonus or Mothers' Allowance. Though these programs were initially for children under the age of 16, the 1992 changes expanded the eligibility to children under 18.
See also COD-2 (s.v. "family allowance"), which marks it as "Cdn".

Quotations

1943
Decisions of far-reaching importance to all Canadians, having to do with a new policy on labor and the proposal to pay family allowances, are expected to be reached by the Government this week.
1951
Canada has already moved a long way toward socialism like a crab, sideways. Family allowances, for instance, a premium on reproduction for the low-income group again like Rome.
1959
[...] they were also given a month's supply of flour and other food paid from their Family Allowance credits.
1963
Canada's family allowances -- $72 a year for each child under the age of ten and $96 for each child between ten and sixteen [...]
1969
Here the per capita income from trapping has been, in some years, less than that received from family allowances alone, not to mention other types of social welfare.
1983
Further, no universal social programs -- either family allowance or old age security -- are going to be cut, the sources said.
2002
Once a month, I was given $10 to put in an account for university. That $10 was the family allowance cheque.
2007
By spring, he was tired of living off employment insurance and family allowance while he fought for compensation.
2015
After keeping such tight controls on household spending during the war, the government wanted Canadians to start spending again after the war ended. They wanted to avoid a postwar recession. In July 1945, after VE-Day, the first Family Allowance cheques went out in the mail. The $9 per child per month allowance was aimed at helping low-income families whose wages had been frozen during the war. Sales representatives called on thrifty families, encouraging them to deposit their "baby bonus" cheques into contractual savings plans and endowment life insurance policies.
2015
Then the real work begins: finding an apartment, getting a social insurance number, getting a medicare card, moving the belongings, taking them on a tour of their new neighbourhood, going grocery shopping with the family, signing the kids up at school, signing the parents up for French classes, getting them a family allowance.

References