The Canada Education Savings Grant (CESG) is money offered by the Government of Canada to help families start saving early for their children’s post-secondary education. The CESG is calculated based on contributions made to a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) for an eligible beneficiary and consists of two components: the Basic and Additional CESG.
The Basic CESG is a 20% payment on the first $2,500 of contributions made into an RESP each year. Beneficiaries are eligible to receive the Basic CESG up to the end of the calendar year in which they turn 17. The Basic CESG is available to all eligible beneficiaries, regardless of income.
Beneficiaries from low- or middle-income families may also qualify for the Additional CESG, a payment of 10% or 20% on the first $500 of contributions made each year, up to the end of the calendar year in which the beneficiary turns 17.
The Government of Canada pays a maximum lifetime amount of $7,200 in the Basic and Additional CESG to each beneficiary.
This dataset presents the number of CESG beneficiaries and payments by Forward Sortation Area (FSA) for 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 which were obtained from the Canada Education Savings Program (CESP) administrative data.
Population counts of 30 or below (and their corresponding dollar values) are suppressed due to privacy issues and are replaced by an asterisk in the dataset.
Please note that the Open Government Portal provides data that add to those already available in the Canada Education Savings Program Annual Statistical Review. The most recent version of the report, which includes data up to 2024, was published on August 5, 2025 and can be found here: https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/services/student-financial-aid/education-savings/reports/statistical-review.html