Economics: Canada: Fed Budget provides Child Benefits for each of a family's kids, help low-income workers, seniors

"This budget's going to be a very easy sell in Canada," says a Global TV news commentator.

I'm looking at the Conservative's "easy sell" budget briefly here, looking at it from the standpoint of how it affects individuals. In fact, it affects individuals differently, not across the board. For most single wage-earners, no major change. But for families and the very-low-income working poor, including single wage-earners who are sole parent, there's a $310 sum alloted for the benefit of each child. The child benefit is perhaps the key provision for most families, and the preponderance of these will be members of the middle-class, including both those where one parent stays home and those with two parents who work.

As mentioned, aside from the mainly-middleclass families, there are special provisions to l+ten the load for working persons who are in the lowest-income category, where they would lose money working for low wages compared to going on the public purse altogether. This provision applies to lowest-income couples where both are working, and to singles in the same income category. They get this provision plus the $310 for each child.

Also, there's some relief for seniors (this provision would affect me directly).

All told, this budget is, from a family's perspective, a progressive conservative and mainstream budget with govt spending to give help for the poorest, the aged, and the middle-class. There's an emphasis on families with children.

Also of great relevance to family finances in relation to the goverment's overall ecological program is the govt's move to reduce air-pollutants by discouraging the buying of dirty-fuelled cars (there's a penalty of up $4,000 on the purchase of these, due to this budget) and at the same time by encouraging the purchase of cleaner-fuelled hybrid cars (yes, there's a $2,000 tax-break for going green when buying a new car).

Further, there's a matter of value to many families in the budget's relief for university students, to help reduce their debt load--a hefty sum which many begin to repay immediately upon entering their first job after graduation.

I'll update this post with specific figures over the next few days.

Tomorrow, however, Politicarp will hopefully provide a political analysis of the Budget.