Federal Government Announces COVID Top-Up Benefit for Seniors

Thursday, 4 June 2020 10:11

The Prime Minister announced that a special one-time payment for seniors will go out the week of July 6th during his morning briefing to Canadians and gave highlights of new modelling data that shows the encouraging trend that COVID-19 is in decline in Canada.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at this morning's national update that a special one-time payment for seniors will go out the week of July 6th.

The COVID-19-related aid will come in the form of $300 payments to the more than six million people who receive old-age security benefits, and an additional $200 for the 2.2 million who also receive the guaranteed income supplement.

Seniors who already receive benefits won't have to apply for the special payment. Those who reside in the country can expect to receive payment by direct deposits or cheques that week. Anyone living outside the country should expect delays if they receive cheques in the mail given international postal disruptions.

The parliamentary budget officer has estimated the overall cost of the measure at almost $2.5 billion this fiscal year.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said during his morning update that new federal data shows that COVID-19 is in decline across Canada but the country is not out of the woods.

Trudeau says a new modelling report will be released today that shows many communities are seeing very low numbers of new cases and most of them can be traced. He says it is encouraging that the virus is "slowing and in some places even stopping" but in some places there are still large numbers of new cases.

Trudeau says the continuing threat means that as more people start returning to working outside their homes, adhering to physical distancing measures and wearing masks remains very important. He says the country also has to do better at testing and tracing contacts of people who contract the novel coronavirus to stamp out flare-ups.

There are more than 91,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 across the country but outside of Quebec and Ontario the number of new cases being identified each day is very low.

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