Information on the Quebec Guidelines

Quebec is the only province in Canada that did not adopt the Guidelines and instead, developed its own child support system. Comparing the Federal Guidelines to the Quebec Guidelines provides support for several key problems with the Guidelines identified in the Report. Specifically:

  1. The Quebec Guidelines use the income of both parents to determine child support amounts and the share that each is expected to pay. The Federal Guidelines use only the pre-tax income of the NCP and do not determine an amount the CP is expected to pay;
  2. The Quebec Guidelines use basic child costs determined by experts to calculate child support amounts. The Federal Guidelines use the 40/30 equivalence scale, but then make very significant and obviously distorting assumptions in favour of the CP;
  3. Although the Quebec Guidelines do not fully account for costs incurred by the NCP while the children are in their custody, an adjustment to child support is made as long as the NCP has the children at least 20% of the time. The Federal Guidelines do not account for any costs of the NCP unless the NCP has custody at least 40% of the time, and even then this issue is not properly calculated, but delegated to the court. The court has no idea where the numbers in the Guidelines come from, which is prescribed as a material factor in the required decision, so they are not well equipped to determine a fair number;
  4. The Quebec Guidelines make an attempt to accommodate new relationships for the NCP. The Federal Guidelines ignore second families; and
  5. In the Quebec Guidelines, NCP table support declines as a percentage of after-tax income as income increases, whereas in the Federal Guidelines, the percentage is for the most part flat across income levels. In fact, the Quebec percentages are notably lower at high incomes compared to a province that has adopted the Guidelines. For example, in Ontario (a province that has adopted the Guidelines) the incremental rate (as a percentage of after-tax income) is 16.7% for one child and 25.9% for two. However, in Quebec, the corresponding incremental rate is 6.8% for one child and 8.7% for two where the NCP’s income is above $200,000 and the CP earns a similar amount. The Quebec Guidelines acknowledge, what the Guidelines ignore, that parents spend a declining percentage of disposable income on their children as income rises.   

A legal opinion on certain aspects of the Quebec Guidelines is available through the following link: Andrew Heft Report.