Welcome to one of the gross inefficiencies of the federal form of government.

Here's an excerpt from a great website on welfare laws by lawyer Simon Shields.

The following tries to explain the complexities of welfare's treatment of the CCTB and the OCB. This complexity is a function of political federal-Ontario wrangling over these programs. The basic problem with any federal attempt to provide additional monies to poor Ontarians is that if Ontario makes the funding 'chargeable' (ie. deductible) for social assistance purposes, then the net effect of the federal program is to transfer the funds directly to the province, with no benefit to the intended targets (this is called "clawback"). Such federal efforts invariably get linked to federal-provincial funding grievances in other government sectors. The result in the present case is a complicated political 'settlement' of this issue, which has in turn resulted in some convoluted legal gymastics as to when and how such program funding is chargeable. Welcome to one of the gross inefficiencies of the federal form of government.

Ontario has signaled that it won't make the new Federal CCB 'chargeable'.

While this blog is about public charges and the charges against them :) I'd just like to mention that most families with kids under 10 will pay childcare costs far in excess of their CCB entitlement. The actual dollars that are spent by governments to subsidize services for children are astronomical.

While the CCB may be a step in the right direction, we currently lack a nation-wide child care program