More children.
Less for each one.

Per child, the funding goes down. Every figure here is the government's own.

In February 2026, the Province announced $475 million over three years for children and youth with support needs and called it historic. This report tests that claim against three consecutive MCFD Service Plans, statutory financial documents tabled under the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act, each signed by the minister. The budget figures and the count of children served both come from these documents. Where a number is our calculation from them, the arithmetic is shown.

The finding: this is not a sustained new investment. There is a single spike in 2026/27 (the announcement year) that falls back the very next year, while the number of children served keeps climbing to 79,000. Divide the budget by the children, and funding per child falls about 30 per cent in plain dollars from that peak. Adjust for inflation — so no one can answer 'but prices rose' — and the fall from the same peak is steeper still: approximately a third, one dollar in every three. The headline got bigger. The help each child receives got smaller.

1 The number that matters: funding per child

A budget total tells you how big a program looks. Funding per child served tells you what a family can actually expect. Both numbers in Table 1 are published by the Ministry: the budget in each year's Financial Summary, and the children served in the 2026 Service Plan's own Performance Measure 4a. Dividing one by the other is simple arithmetic, and it is the single most important figure in this announcement. Funding per child served is a system-level measure: it tells the public whether the Ministry is putting more or fewer dollars behind each child it serves, regardless of how that resource is distributed across tiers, supplements, or community services. It is not a forecast of any one family's amount — individual outcomes vary, and the variation is the subject of Section 4. It is the most honest single test of whether "historic investment" means more for each child or less. By the Ministry's own arithmetic, the answer is less.

The pattern is unmistakable, and it survives the obvious objection. Funding per child peaks in 2026/27 (the announcement year) then falls every year after, dropping about 30 per cent in plain dollars from that peak to roughly $8,750 by 2028/29. Because a government will always answer "but prices rose," it is worth noting that adjusting for inflation makes the picture worse, not better: at the Province's own CPI forecast of about 2 per cent a year, the real decline from the 2026/27 peak is closer to a third — even after inflation has been stripped out. And it falls while the Ministry's own measure shows the number of children served rising from 58,000 to 79,000, an increase of more than a third.

More children, sharing a pool that shrinks after one showcase year. That is not an investment in each child. It is the opposite, dressed as its reverse.

2 A spike in the announcement year, not a lasting commitment

Follow the single budget line for 2026/27 — the same fiscal year — across three consecutive plans (Table 2), and watch it nearly double in two years, just as the announcement arrives.

The money was rising before the announcement, quietly, across two budgets. In the 2024 plan, both 2025/26 and 2026/27 were budgeted at $585.5M. By the 2025 plan — tabled in March 2025, eleven months before the 'historic' announcement — the government had already raised 2025/26 to $642.9M (+$57M) and 2026/27 to $648.2M (+$63M): a combined $120 million in upward revisions, written into its own budget before any announcement was made. The announcement-year budget then piled a further $167 million onto 2026/27, lifting it to $814.8M. The 'new' investment was layered on top of increases the government had already committed to.

And the spike does not last. Most of the $814.8M appears only in the 2026 plan, the one that carried the 'historic' announcement. But the next year, 2027/28, the same line drops back to $678.5M, and 2028/29 sits at $691.3M. The announcement year is a peak, not a plateau. A reader looking only at the $814.8M headline would never know the Ministry's own plan shows it falling by more than $130M the very next year.

And the spike itself is not what it appears. The Autism Funding Program does not end until March 31, 2027, so for the full 2026/27 fiscal year the old Autism and SAET systems run alongside the new CYSN benefits, twelve months of paying for two systems at once. The $814.8 million peak is, in significant part, a bookkeeping artefact of that transition overlap. It is not a sustained level of investment; it is the cost of running parallel programs for one year.

Once that overlap ends, the years after the spike do not even keep up. In its 2025 plan the government committed $648.2 million to 2027/28, the first full year of the new system alone. Its 2026 plan now budgets $678.5 million for that same year, nominally 4.7 per cent higher, which the government may present as an increase. But hold the 2025 commitment flat in real terms, simply keeping pace with the province's own CPI forecast of 2.1 per cent in 2026 and 2.0 per cent in 2027, and it would need to reach about $675 million. The 2026 plan delivers $678.5 million. In real terms the "increase" is half of one per cent, a rounding error. Strip out the transition overlap, compare like-for-like steady-state years, and the 2026 budget delivers no more in 2027/28 than the 2025 budget had already committed, before accounting for a caseload that grows more than a third over the period.

The 2026/27 figure is not a new level of investment. It is the cost of running the old Autism program and the new Benefit in parallel for twelve months before the old system sunsets. The years on either side are what the redesign actually costs — and they fall, even as the caseload keeps growing. New money sustains; a transition overlap does not.

3 Not new money — a reallocation the documents describe

Two things point to reallocation rather than fresh money. First, the Premier's mandate letter to the minister — reproduced in both the 2025 and 2026 Service Plans — directs her, as her first priority, to "work with the Minister of Finance to review all existing Ministry of Children and Family Development programs and initiatives to ensure programs remain relevant, are efficient… in the context of current Provincial budget constraints." That is an instruction to find efficiencies under budget constraint, written eleven months before the announcement of historic investment.

Second, the government has described the reallocation in its own words. At the February 10 announcement the government described "$475 million in new money… in addition to redirecting $289 million in existing funding over three years for the current autism funding program" (BC Gov News release, Feb 10 2026). And the new Disability Supplement is not a separate, free-standing program: Budget 2026 introduces it "as part of the B.C. Family Benefit" (p.82), the Finance Minister told the House it is "a new $6,000 children and youth Disability Supplement as part of the B.C. Family Benefit" (Hansard, Mar 5 2026), and it sits in the Ministry of Finance's Tax Transfers vote, delivered by the CRA, added to families' July 2027 Family Benefit payment. In that same Family Benefit line, payments fall from $696 million in 2024/25 to $520 million in 2026/27 — about $176 million — as a temporary Family Benefit Bonus (paid only July 2024 to June 2025) was not renewed.

The province does not say the reduction pays for the Disability Supplement, and we do not claim it does; but both happen inside the same benefit, in the same budget: an existing child benefit is trimmed for families generally while a narrower, income-tested, DTC-gated disability stream that does not pay until July 2027 is built into it. Renewing the bonus was affordable — the same government raised the CYSN line by $229 million across two budget cycles — so the reduction to families was a choice made in the same budget that announced 'historic' disability funding, not a necessity. Table 3 sets the government's framing against its own documents.

Table 3 — What the government says versus what its own documents show

Sources: MCFD 2026/27–2028/29 Service Plan (Financial Summary p.12; Performance Measure 4a p.10; Appendix B mandate letter); Budget 2026 Appendix Table A1.1.1; Island Social Trends coverage of the Feb 10 2026 announcement; the official announcement release ($289M redirected).

4 Fewer dollars per child, across every disability

The squeeze does not fall on one diagnosis. The Autism Funding Program and the At Home Program's School-Aged Extended Therapies both end and feed into the same new system. Children with Autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, intellectual disabilities, medical complexity and rare conditions are all routed into the same redesigned system, on the same timeline — the Autism program terminates March 31, 2027. The new Benefit has two tiers: a base of $6,500 and a higher tier of $17,000. Eligibility for the higher tier is reserved for a narrow group meeting the release's "highest functional support needs" criteria (highly symptomatic autism with intellectual disability, moderate-to-severe intellectual disability, GMFCS 3–5 cerebral palsy, specific syndromes, palliative or degenerative conditions); most Benefit-eligible children will receive the $6,500 base. Families whose child does not qualify for either Benefit tier are routed to the income-tested Supplement (up to $6,000, gated by the federal Disability Tax Credit) or to community services only.

And the need is climbing fast. The Ministry's own December 2025 service-rate report shows the Autism Funding Program caseload rising from just over 21,000 open and pending cases in March 2021 to almost 39,000 by December 2025 — nearly double in under five years, growing about 12 per cent annually, and, in the Ministry's own words, "doubling almost every six to seven years." That is Autism alone. Against that rising demand, the new Disability Benefit is expected to reach just 12,000–15,000 children. A budget that spikes for one year and then falls is being set against a population of need that compounds every year.

• The new Benefit is capped by design. $6,500 base or $17,000 higher tier, expected to reach only about 12,000–15,000 children, roughly 9,000 of them with Autism — against a current Autism funding caseload of roughly 27,000 (nearly 39,000 including open and pending cases), and against a total caseload projected to reach 79,000 by 2028/29. The Benefit will reach roughly one in six of the children the Ministry says it will serve (sources: government CYSN FAQ, Feb 2026; Island Social Trends, Feb 2026; MCFD Autism Funding Service Rate report, Dec 2025).
• The Disability Supplement is conditional. Up to $6,000, income-tested above $50,000 net, and paid only to families approved for the federal DTC (confirmed: Budget 2026 p.82).
• A worst-case example — children under 6. Under the new model, a child under 6 currently receiving the $22,000 autism maximum could land anywhere from roughly $23,000 down to nothing, depending on three independent variables the family does not control: which benefit tier the Ministry assesses the child into ($6,500 base or $17,000 higher), whether the child qualifies for the federal Disability Tax Credit, and where the family's income sits against the $50,000 supplement threshold (full at or below, tapering to about $200,000, then nothing). To illustrate one path through that gauntlet: a Vancouver family with about $72,000 in net income whose child is assessed into the lower tier would receive a benefit-plus-supplement of roughly $11,620 (the $6,500 benefit plus a $5,120 supplement) — about $10,000 less than today. Some families will see worse outcomes, a few will see better, and the spread itself is the problem: families cannot plan therapy contracts, hours, or care around an amount they will not know until the Ministry tells them. This is the cohort with the most to lose: the $22,000 maximum applies to children under 6, so the deepest reductions fall on the youngest children now receiving intensive funding — including infants and toddlers in early intervention, where months matter. For children aged 6 to 18 (current maximum $6,000), and for children newly included under the diagnosis-neutral model, the change may be smaller or may be a gain.

It is fair to credit what the redesign genuinely does, because the case rests on accuracy. The Minister told the House that "a third of the children with Autism currently receiving Autism funding are actually going to receive more funding in the new system," and that most will continue to receive, at least some, direct funding; the model also extends funding to children with other diagnoses who were excluded before — a change disability advocates sought for years. The question is not whether anyone gains. It is who loses, and by how much. On the Ministry's own figures, Autism funding rises from about $190 million to $230 million — a $40-million increase — while total direct funding rises to $326 million; most of the new money flows to the income-tested Disability Supplement and to newly included groups, not to deeper support for the children with the highest needs. (Hansard: Mar 11 2026; Feb 18 2026; Mar 12 2026.)

The per-child math from Section 1 is the system-wide version of that story: the total CYSN budget falls after 2026/27 — from $814.8M to $678.5M and $691.3M — even as the number of children served rises to 79,000. This is not simply an average diluted by including more children; it is a shrinking budget divided among a growing caseload. Both move the wrong way at once.

5 The loss is sharpest where help is hardest to reach

One income threshold — the full Disability Supplement to a net income of $50,000, then tapering four cents on the dollar until it phases out entirely at about $200,000 — lands very differently across a province of very different costs.

High-cost urban regions

The BC Living Wage Report 2025 (Living Wage for Families BC) shows a two-parent family needs about $101,374 a year in Metro Vancouver and $99,736 in Greater Victoria just for basics, the annual equivalent of the report's $27.85 and $27.40 hourly living wages for two full-time earners. The $50,000 full-Supplement threshold sits far below the cost of living in every urban centre, so the Supplement erodes fastest where housing costs most: a family meeting only basic local needs in Vancouver or Victoria is already well into the taper, receiving substantially less than a same-income family in a lower-cost region.

Rural and remote regions

Rural families face the same flat threshold and a harder landscape. Therapy may be hours away or absent locally; the "expanded community-based services" meant to replace direct funding cluster where population is dense. Replacing a rural family's flexible funding with distant services is not a lateral move — it is a loss the income test cannot see, and the Benefit tiers do not adjust for. The federal Disability Tax Credit is also harder to complete where the specialists who must certify it are scarce.

High-cost rural communities — places like Fernie, Tofino, Revelstoke, or much of the Kootenays and the Sea-to-Sky — face both losses at once: urban-level costs of living with rural-level access to services. They are exactly the families the Supplement's design fails on every dimension.

A single $50,000 threshold cannot be neutral across a province this varied. Where life costs the most, the Supplement gives the least; where services are furthest, the policy points families toward something that isn't there. Geography is not a detail the design overlooks — it is the dimension on which the design fails.

6 What the Province should do

A government that can raise a single budget line by $229 million across two budget cycles can afford to protect the children behind it. We ask three things, in order of urgency.

The money is there — the government already budgeted it. The question is whether it will be spent so that every child has more or arranged so that one year looks generous and the rest do not.

Primary sources: MCFD Service Plans 2024–2026; Budget 2026 (Table A1.1.1, p.82); published Hansard; BC Living Wage Report 2025. Per-child figures are the authors' calculations from the published budget and caseload; regional figures are labelled estimates. Full citations with page numbers are in the companion sources appendix.