Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit Supplement: Who Could Get Up to $679 in Early 2027

By Kimi · November 7, 2026 · 8 min read

Key takeaways

Budget 2026, tabled on November 5, 2026, proposes a one-time 2027 Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit Supplement equal to 50% of a person’s 2026-27 benefit.
The budget’s maximums are up to $339 for a single person without children and up to $679 for a couple with two children. ⚠️ $679 is also CRA’s regular 2026-27 maximum for a single person, which is a different figure.
Amounts would shrink as 2025 adjusted family net income rises above $46,432, and the supplement would run out at the same income level as the regular benefit.
The draft law pays the supplement only to people who file a 2025 tax return. There is no separate application in the draft.
⚠️ No payment day has been set. The budget says early 2027 and the draft law names January 2027, but CRA has published no 2027 dates.
⚠️ It is a proposal. It sits in a Notice of Ways and Means Motion, and no bill to enact it had been introduced as of November 7, 2026.

Budget 2026 proposes a one-time 2027 Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit Supplement equal to 50% of a person’s 2026-27 Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit. The $679 in the headlines is the maximum for a couple with two children. A single person without children could get up to $339. Amounts would shrink as 2025 adjusted family net income rises above $46,432, and the draft law pays only people who file a 2025 tax return. This is a proposal, not law, and no payment date has been set.

Everything below was checked at 13:01 UTC on November 7, 2026 (8:01 a.m. Eastern), two days after François-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Finance and National Revenue, tabled Budget 2026 in Ottawa on November 5.

What is the proposed 2027 Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit Supplement?

It is a proposed one-time top-up to the existing Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit (CGEB), equal to 50% of what a person gets from the benefit for the July 2026 to June 2027 benefit year, paid in early 2027.

The budget is not creating a new grocery benefit. The CGEB already exists: it is the former GST/HST credit, renamed and enlarged. It became law on February 12, 2026 and replaced the GST/HST credit in July 2026. It is non-taxable, income-tested, indexed to inflation and paid quarterly in July, October, January and April.

Budget 2026 proposes to add one extra payment on top. The budget says the supplement would:

cost $4.1 billion,
reach more than 12 million Canadians, and
lift an estimated additional 120,000 people out of poverty in 2027.

The government’s Impacts Report estimates that over three quarters of the extra money would go to single people with and without children. It also says more than half of seniors would get some of it.

Budget 2026 includes other cost-of-living measures that are separate from the supplement. One is new funding for Nutrition North Canada: $610.3 million over four years starting in 2027-28. The budget also restates the federal fuel excise relief schedule, which we cover in our gas tax explainer .

How much could you get?

The budget puts the maximum at $339 for a single person without children and $679 for a couple with two children. You would get less if your 2025 adjusted family net income is above $46,432.

The supplement is built from the same parts as the regular benefit, with each maximum cut in half. The table below shows each part in dollars: “2026-27 max” is the regular annual maximum under current rules, and “Supplement” is the proposed one-time maximum. The budget rounds each part, so the parts do not add up exactly to its $339 and $679 totals.

Part	2026-27 max	Supplement
Per adult	$445	$223
Per child	$234	$117
Single supp.	$234	$117

The “single supplement” is an extra amount for single adults and single parents.

The $679 figure is the budget’s example for a couple with two children, not an overall ceiling. Families with more children would have a higher maximum, because $117 is added for each child.

Do not mix up two different $679 figures. CRA’s regular 2026-27 maximum CGEB for a single person is also $679. For a single person without children, the proposed supplement maximum is $339. CRA’s other regular maximums for 2026-27 are $890 for a married or common-law couple and $234 for each child under 19.

The budget also gives full-year totals. Counting the June 2026 one-time top-up, the 25% increase from July 2026 and this supplement, 2026-27 support would come to up to about $1,290 for a single person without children and $2,570 for a couple with two children.

How does your income affect the amount?

The supplement would be based on 2025 income and would shrink once 2025 adjusted family net income passes $46,432, running out at the same income level as the regular benefit.

The budget explains it this way:

The regular CGEB for 2026-27 phases out at a rate of 5% on 2025 adjusted family net income above $46,432.
For single adults without children, the regular single supplement phases in at a rate of 2% on 2025 net income above $11,564.
For the supplement only, the budget sets a 6% phase-in rate and a 15% phase-out rate. It says these rates make the supplement fully phase in and phase out at the same income levels as the regular benefit.

⚠️ Those supplement rates are applied inside the draft law’s formula, which also takes the regular January payment into account. They do not mean 15% of every dollar above $46,432 is clawed back from your supplement. In practice, the supplement would run out at the same income at which the regular benefit runs out.

CRA has not published a supplement calculator. Your exact amount would depend on your 2025 return and family situation.

When would the supplement be paid?

No exact date exists yet. The budget says early 2027, and the draft law names January 2027.

The timing appears in several places:

Budget and Impacts Report. Both say “early 2027”, and the Impacts Report calls it a standalone payment.
Budget speech. It says the supplement comes “this winter”.
Draft legislation. It treats the supplement as an additional payment in January 2027, the same month as the regular January 2027 CGEB payment.

CRA has published no payment dates for 2027 and nothing on the supplement. Its CGEB payment-dates page lists four dates for 2026:

January 5 and April 2, 2026 were GST/HST credit payments.
July 3 and October 5, 2026 were CGEB quarterly payments.

Please don’t rely on any specific January 2027 date you see online until CRA posts one.

Do you need to apply or file a tax return?

The draft law pays the supplement only to people who file a 2025 tax return, and it does not set up a separate application.

Under the draft, the January 2027 supplement goes to an eligible individual who files a return of income for 2025. The draft does not set a filing deadline for the supplement. It doesn’t say whether someone who files a 2025 return late could still get it after January 2027.

For the regular benefit, CRA says that filing your taxes means you are automatically considered for the CGEB. People who are new residents of Canada use CRA’s separate new-resident process. CRA has not yet said how either point would apply to the supplement.

How would it work for single parents and shared custody?

Single parents would keep the treatment they get under the regular benefit, and the draft law has its own rule for shared-custody parents.

Under the current CGEB rules, as the budget describes them, single parents get:

the full single supplement, without the income phase-in, and
the adult amount, instead of the child amount, for their first child.

Each additional child gets the per-child amount. The draft formula for the supplement keeps this structure.

For the regular benefit, CRA says parents in a shared custody situation may be eligible for half of the CGEB for that child. The draft legislation includes a separate shared-custody formula for the January 2027 supplement. CRA has not yet explained how that rule would apply.

Is the supplement law yet?

No. As of November 7, 2026, it is a budget proposal set out in a Notice of Ways and Means Motion, and no bill to enact it has been introduced.

A Notice of Ways and Means Motion is draft tax legislation tabled with the budget. Parliament still has to pass a bill, and the details could change along the way. When we checked LEGISinfo, Parliament’s bill tracker, at 13:01 UTC on November 7, it showed no Budget 2026 implementation bill.

The base benefit is different. The CGEB itself was enacted by Bill C-19, the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit Act, which received royal assent on February 12, 2026.

Is this the same as the 2023 Grocery Rebate?

No. The 2023 Grocery Rebate was a separate, earlier one-time payment; this proposal is a new supplement to the CGEB.

Where can you check what you will actually get?

Your CRA My Account and the CGEB pages on canada.ca are where official amounts and dates will appear.

What you can use today:

CRA My Account is where CRA shows your benefit payments.
CRA’s CGEB pages on canada.ca list payment dates and amounts.
If an expected payment does not arrive, CRA asks you to wait 10 business days after the payment date before calling.

If Parliament passes the supplement, expect CRA to add it to those pages. This page explains the proposal; it can’t tell you your own amount.

Sources

How we verified this

Status was checked at 13:01 UTC on November 7, 2026 (8:01 a.m. Eastern). The supplement exists only in the Budget 2026 documents and in a Notice of Ways and Means Motion tabled with the budget. The LEGISinfo bill list for the 45th Parliament, 1st Session (198 bills), read at that time, contained no Budget 2026 implementation bill; the only budget bills listed implement the November 4, 2025 budget. Every statement about the supplement is therefore written as a proposal.

The amounts come from the budget, not from our arithmetic. The $339 and $679 maximums, the $4.1 billion cost, the 120,000 people expected to be lifted out of poverty and the “about $1,290” and “$2,570” full-year totals are quoted from Chapter 3. The per-adult, per-child and single-supplement figures ($223, $117, $117) and the regular 2026-27 maximums ($445, $234, $234) come from Tax Measures: Supplementary Information. The component figures are rounded, so they do not add exactly to the budget’s totals; we did not add components together to reach any family total.

The phase-out is described in the budget’s words. Tax Measures says the regular benefit phases out at 5% above $46,432 of 2025 adjusted family net income and the single supplement phases in at 2% above $11,564 of 2025 net income. For the supplement only, those rates would be 6% and 15%, so it would be fully phased in and out at the same income levels as the regular benefit. In the draft law the 15% rate sits inside a larger formula that also subtracts the regular January payment, so it is not a simple 15% cut of income above $46,432. Read that way, the draft works out to half of what a person gets from the regular 2026-27 benefit, consistent with Chapter 3’s “one-time 50% increase”. We give no worked examples.

Timing and filing rest on the draft legislation. The Notice of Ways and Means Motion adds an “Additional deemed payment — January 2027” to section 122.5 of the Income Tax Act. It names January 2027 as the month and 2025 as the taxation year, and it applies to an eligible individual who files a return for that year. It sets no filing deadline, so we make no claim either way about late filers. The budget itself says “early 2027”, the Impacts Report says a standalone payment in early 2027, and the budget speech says “this winter”. CRA’s payment-dates page (page details 2026-06-08), re-read at 13:01 UTC, lists only 2026 dates, labels January 5 and April 2 as GST/HST credit payments and does not mention a supplement.

CRA background was read on CRA’s own pages. These cover the CGEB replacing the GST/HST credit in July 2026, the 2026-27 regular maximums of $679, $890 and $234 (how-much page, 2026-07-15), automatic consideration when you file, and the shared-custody rule for the regular benefit (who-eligible page, 2026-03-02). None of these pages mentions the 2027 supplement yet. Bill C-19’s dates (House third reading February 4, Senate third reading and royal assent February 12, 2026) are from LEGISinfo.

Left out on purpose. Political and provincial reactions could not be verified from original articles, so none appear. This page gives no advice about anyone’s own entitlement.