The Canada Learning Bond Pays Up to $2,000 and Asks for No Contribution. Fewer Than Half of Eligible Children Have Ever Received It.
The Canada Learning Bond is the piece of federal education money that asks nothing of the family. No contribution, no match, up to $2,000 per child. According to the Canada Education Savings Program’s 2025 Annual Statistical Review, 2.3 million children have ever received it, on the review’s rounded count, against 5.4 million who have been eligible, and the take-up rate the program publishes is 43.9%.
Unlike the federal education savings grant, it does not punish a late start. The basic grant still available to a plan first opened at a given age decays from 11 and is nil from 16. The bond’s $2,000 ceiling holds until the day before the beneficiary’s 21st birthday, and from 18 the beneficiary can claim it without the parent who never opened a plan.
The bond pays $500 once, then $100 a year, to a maximum of $2,000
canada.ca sets out the structure in three lines: “$500 their first year of eligibility”, “another $100 for each year of eligibility up to and including age 15”, and a “$2,000 maximum per eligible child”.
The Act is where those limits bite. CESA s.6(2.4) makes the $500 payable once in the beneficiary’s lifetime and the $100 once per benefit year, and s.6(3) defines a benefit year as July 1 to June 30. The published $2,000 maximum is what the statute’s own arithmetic produces: $500 plus fifteen payments of $100.
The Minister may also pay a discretionary further $25 with the first $500 for the cost of administering the plan (CESR s.15, with CESA s.6(5)), which is not part of the child’s $2,000.
Eligibility runs through the Canada child benefit, and the 2026-27 bond turns on 2025 income
Two conditions sit in CESA s.6(1). The beneficiary must have been “born after 2003” and must be “less than 21 years of age at the time of the application”.
The money test is not a separate means test. s.6(2)(a)(i) keys it to the “adjusted income used to determine the amount of a Canada child benefit” of the eligible individual, for at least one month in the benefit year. Adjusted income is a household figure: ITA 122.6 counts the individual’s income plus that of a “cohabiting spouse or common-law partner at the end of the year”. ESDC’s Notice #1138, dated July 2, 2026, publishes the resulting lines for the benefit year running July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027. The left column counts qualified dependants, children who qualify for the Canada child benefit and are therefore under 18, not everyone in the house.
| Children in the family | Adjusted income |
|---|---|
| 1 to 3 | $58,523 or less |
| 4 | under $66,036 |
| 5 | under $73,577 |
| 6 | under $81,117 |
| 7 | under $88,658 |
| 8 | under $96,198 |
| 9 | under $103,739 |
| 10 | under $111,279 |
| 11 | under $118,820 |
| 12 | under $126,360 |
| 13 | under $133,901 |
| 14 | under $141,442 |
| 15 | under $148,982 |
| 16 | under $156,523 |
Source: ESDC Notice CESP/PCEE-2026-001-1138, dated July 2, 2026, for the benefit year July 1, 2026 to June 30, 2027.
A second route skips the income table entirely: s.6(2)(a)(ii) pays the same amounts for “a person in respect of whom a special allowance under the Children’s Special Allowances Act is payable”, children in care, whom ITA 122.6 excludes from “qualified dependant”.
That $58,523 is not ESDC’s own number. CESA s.2 defines the “first threshold” as the dollar amount in paragraph 117(2)(a) of the Income Tax Act “as adjusted under that Act for the particular year”, the top of the first federal tax bracket, which CRA’s T4032ON January 2026 edition puts at $58,523 for 2026. Above three children the line comes from the s.6(2.1) formula, whose dollar amounts s.6(2.2) indexes under ITA 117.1. The first step, from three children to four, is $7,513, because the 1-to-3 row is the flat threshold rather than a formula output; every step after that is about $7,541.
Which tax year gets tested is easy to get wrong. ITA 122.6 puts the “base taxation year” one calendar year back for a month in the last six months of a calendar year and two years back for a month in the first six. Across the 2026-27 benefit year, every month lands on the same year: 2025.
An application for a benefit year before July 1, 2016 is tested under the Act and regulations “as they read immediately before” that date, and the 2016-17 year under the versions in force immediately before July 1, 2017 (CESA s.14.1).
canada.ca states that primary caregivers “must have filed income tax returns for each year they wish to request the CLB” and must be eligible for the Canada child benefit. The filing requirement is the real catch on a retroactive claim. And CESA s.7 bars payment unless the Minister has the beneficiary’s Social Insurance Number and that of the individual who made the designation, and unless the beneficiary is resident in Canada immediately before payment.
The $2,000 is a maximum earned year by year, not a lump sum
s.6(2)(a) attaches the $500 to the first benefit year in which both the age and the income condition are met, and s.6(2)(b) pays $100 for each subsequent year in which both are met. The age condition is that the beneficiary was “less than 15 years of age at the beginning of the month immediately before the benefit year”, or born in that year or the month before it, so accrual runs up to and including age 15 while claiming runs to 21. A family above the income line in some years collects less than $2,000.
Take a child born April 11, 2018, aged 8 today. Sixteen benefit years pass the age condition, 2017-18 through 2032-33; nine are complete and 2026-27 is running now. Suppose the income test was met in five completed years: 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22, 2024-25 and 2025-26. The claim today is $500 for 2019-20 plus $100 for each of the other four: $900, not $2,000. Note where the $500 lands: 2019-20, the first year both tests were met, not the birth year. The year now running and the six after it can each add $100, and the door for this child closes the day before April 11, 2039.
The door is the beneficiary’s 21st birthday, not the end of high school
A plan first opened at 11 can still collect $7,000 of basic grant, at 13 $5,000, at 15 $3,000, and from 16 nil, a decay we set out in the last year to start an RESP and still collect the full grant. The bond column does not move: $2,000 at every one of those ages, right through 20. From 16 to 20, the bond is all of the federal education money still on the table.
The grant bars assume contributions in every year; the bond bars assume none. Source: our calculation on the Canada Education Savings Act and the Canada Education Savings Regulations.
CESA s.6(1) is why that column holds: the deadline is the beneficiary’s 21st birthday, and canada.ca’s amounts page is explicit that from age 18, “eligible beneficiaries have until the day before they turn 21” to request it themselves. s.6(4) makes that workable: a beneficiary “18 years of age or more” may designate the trust the money is paid into. A 19-year-old with no plan, and no parent willing to open one, can still claim the bond for themselves. The binding constraint on that young adult is the filed returns: the back years only pay if the primary caregiver’s returns were filed, and the beneficiary cannot make anyone file.
Nobody applies to the government directly, either. CESR s.6(1)(a) requires the trustee to hold a trustee agreement with the Minister, and s.6(1)(b) requires that “the application for the CLB is made by the trustee, at the request of a subscriber under the RESP”. The practical first step is opening an RESP at a provider that holds that agreement, and the provider applies. Even a plan holding nothing but bond money has to hold it in something, and we set out what by age in Best RESP Investments in Canada, by Your Child’s Age.
Because the cutoff is the beneficiary’s own 21st birthday, the eligible cohort rolls forward a day every day. Read on October 10, 2026, it was children born on or after October 11, 2005; someone born on October 10, 2005 turns 21 that day and is out.
A late claim is not the equal of an early one: $2,000 claimed by a twenty-year-old has fewer years to work than $2,000 paid for a four-year-old, which is the subject of our explainer on how compounding works. But the choice is not early against late. It is late against never.
Parliament has enacted a longer window and has not brought it into force
The in-force s.6(1) reads “less than 21 years of age at the time of the application”. In the Act’s “AMENDMENTS NOT IN FORCE” list, 2024, c. 17, s. 163(1) replaces it with one reading “less than 31 years of age”. A ten-year extension of the claiming window has been enacted and has not been brought into force.
The automatic enrolment machinery splits the same way. In force: s.6(1.1) obliges the Minister to notify the primary caregiver of an eligible child born after 2023 who is not already a beneficiary, and s.6(1.2) obliges the Minister to open an RESP for that child. Both duties are conditioned on the child’s Social Insurance Number having been provided, so a child without one is neither notified nor enrolled. The timing in s.6(1.2) is a floor rather than a schedule: it fixes the earliest day the plan may be opened, no sooner than age four or 365 days after the eligibility determination, and leaves the actual day to the Minister. s.6(1.3) lets a caregiver refuse, and s.6(1.4) adds that an application may still be made for a person for whom a refusal was communicated, so refusing does not forfeit the bond. Not in force: the authority in s.6(1.5) to pay a bond into a plan the Minister opened, the residency condition s.7.01 for such payments, and the regulation-making power behind them.
ESDC’s Canada Learning Bond page says the government “will automatically open an RESP starting April 2028” and “will not accept requests for opting out until 2027”. The duty is already law. The 2028 start follows the floor the page itself sets out: enrolment covers children born 2024 or later who are “not already a beneficiary of an RESP by age 4”, and the first eligible cohort, born in 2024, turns four during 2028. Until the payment authority is in force, an application is what moves the money.
The bond belongs to the child, and a wound-up plan sends it back
The Canada Education Savings Regulations track the bond separately from everything else in a plan. s.6(1)(e) requires a CLB account for each beneficiary a bond is paid for, and s.6(1)(d) requires the plan to have one beneficiary, or beneficiaries who are all brothers or sisters of one another.
s.17(1)(a) allows a CLB account to move to another plan only if “both CLB accounts are in respect of the same beneficiary”, and s.16(1) excludes “an amount in a CLB account” from the general transfer rule that lets grant move between siblings. s.18(2) says the same inside a single plan, with one exception: a bond “shall not be shared among beneficiaries of the RESP”, though “the earnings generated on a CLB may be shared”. Grant can follow a sibling. The bond cannot, though what it earns can.
Three repayment triggers follow. Under s.11(6), a beneficiary leaving the plan triggers repayment of that child’s CLB account balance, and under s.11(7), the CLB accounts are repaid if someone who is not a sibling of every other beneficiary joins. And under s.11(3)(a) with s.11(4), terminating the plan triggers repayment of all CLB account balances, so a bond never spent on education goes back to the government rather than to the family. Each repayment is capped by a fair market value measure, so a plan worth less than its CLB accounts repays only what is actually there.
A repaid bond is not destroyed. CESR s.14 lets an amount repaid under section 11 “be paid into an RESP in respect of the same beneficiary if the conditions of payment of a CLB are otherwise met”, and s.6(2.4), which makes the $500 once-in-a-lifetime, is written around it: the restriction applies “other than for the purposes of section 14”.
Fees cannot eat the account: trustee and promoter agreements must provide that they “shall not charge fees related to the RESP against the balance of the grant account or the CLB account of any beneficiary” (CESR s.8(i) and s.9(e)).
CESR s.7(b) lets the Minister waive the 21-year deadline to avoid undue hardship under CESA s.9.1, though s.9.1(2) bars waiving anything about the CCB eligibility determination.
Because the bond is not a contribution, it does not consume any of the $50,000 lifetime RESP limit, which ITA 204.9 measures by “contributions made … by or on behalf of all subscribers”.
Take-up has climbed for a decade and is still under half
Every figure here comes from the 2025 Annual Statistical Review, covering calendar 2025. The gap behind that cumulative 43.9% is about three million children. In 2025 itself, 174,941 new beneficiaries were added, an annual take-up rate of 18.8%, and net payments came to $186.7 million, taking the cumulative total since 2004 to $2.4 billion. The direction of travel is up, from a cumulative 33.8% in 2016, and the spread across the country is wide, from Quebec at 52.0% to Nunavut at 2.9%.
CESA s.3.1 obliges the Minister to make known to Canadians, “through informational and promotional activities, the existence of CES grants and Canada Learning Bonds and any terms and conditions.” That duty sits alongside a take-up rate still under half.
What a family can check this week
For any child in the house born after 2003, three things are worth confirming: whether a plan already holds a CLB account, whether the returns for the years being claimed were filed, and how long is left before the 21st birthday. Only one plan per child receives the bond, however many are opened, so a grandparent’s RESP may already hold it. There is nothing to contribute and nothing to match. The deadline is a birthday.
Figures in this article are as of October 10, 2026, from the sources named above.
Disclaimer: The content on bestcanadianstocks.ca is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. Statutory references are to the Canada Education Savings Act and the Canada Education Savings Regulations as consolidated at the Justice Laws website, fetched October 8, 2026, and to Income Tax Act sections 122.6 and 204.9. The 2026-27 income thresholds are ESDC Notice CESP/PCEE-2026-001-1138 dated July 2, 2026. The take-up figures are the Canada Education Savings Program 2025 Annual Statistical Review, reporting period January 1 to December 31, 2025. The bond and grant maximums by start age, the 276-case verification of the $2,000 ceiling, the worked example and the age-21 cohort dates are our own arithmetic applying those provisions, as of October 10, 2026.
