Canada Emergency Response Benefit statistics

Notes

1. Applicants contained in this data may have found jobs or returned to work and therefore no longer receive CERB benefits.
2. Unique applicants are people who have applied for the CERB benefit with either CRA and/or ESDC. A unique applicant is only counted once for the lifetime of the CERB program regardless of the number of times they have applied.
3. Two administrative data reporting errors were recently uncovered in how the total unique applicant measure was previously calculated. Correcting these errors resulted in a lower number of total unique applicants, now reflected in the updated data. As this was an administrative data reporting issue, the correction did NOT impact the number of applications received, processed, nor the dollar amount of the total benefits. Two factors caused the reporting methodology to produce the higher number of unique applicants:
   1. Applicants who applied and whose first application was paid by CRA, and who at the end of their first eligibility payment period applied to Service Canada for future benefit periods. Under this scenario, Service Canada assumes responsibility for the client, their remaining CERB payments, and the client is unable to revert back to CRA for CERB payments. Although Service Canada is responsible for paying the remaining benefits, the previous calculation mistakenly continued to identify the client as the responsibility of both departments.
   2. Some clients who had an initial EI application and also submitted a renewal EI application. Under this scenario, the applicant was initially identified as two individuals instead of one in Service Canada's administrative data.
4. The data for applications received, unique applicants (also broken down by province and territory, age group and gender), applications processed and total dollar value of benefits paid, includes applications for CERB received through the CRA channel and all EI applications received through Service Canada. The vast majority of EI applications received since March 15 were established as CERB claims, with the only exceptions being: applications for which the benefit start date was prior to March 15; applications to renew claims that were active prior to this date; or applications for special benefits (such as Family Caregiver Benefits, Compassionate Care Benefits, Parental and Maternity benefits).
5. Applications processed includes applications that were already in the queue to be processed for EI on March 15, and some were subsequently processed post March 15. In comparison, applications received includes only those applications that have been received since March 15.
6. All numbers have been rounded to the nearest ten.
7. The column 'Gender diverse' represents applicants whose gender is either not disclosed, or is non-binary.
8. Province and Territory of 'Not Applicable' is used when an applicant provides an address outside of Canada. While the CERB program requires people to reside inside Canada to qualify, some individuals may be currently out of the country on a temporary basis, or working in Canada on a temporary basis. For example: a student who is temporarily abroad, someone temporarily working abroad, someone who could not make it back into the country due to the pandemic, or a temporary worker who has fallen ill but their home address is in another country.
9. A small number of applicants did not provide a valid address (mailing or residential) and have been grouped in the Province & Territories category of 'Unknown'. As part of the review process, CRA and Service Canada are following up with these applicants.