Real estate, good grief - even with the max $6.4k a year it'd be a while before they could buy a house!!
Ok, so plan is this:
Open chequing accounts in their names (with us parents as custodians or trustees);
get CTB money into chequing account;
buy starter DRIP share "DaveRobEv in trust for Child Name" using money in chequing account;
register on Computershare/CanStockTransfer;
set up recurring purchases from chequing account.
Sorted? All above board, no attribution to me. And, I think, if my mum (who lives in France) gives them money, and I put that *directly* into their accounts, that also doesn't get attributed back to her because it can't.
Firstly - real estate, 10k may buy you 10% ownership in an apartment in many locations..
The aunt suggestion -- I think that will not work out well... all monetary gifts that earn income have the income attributed back to the giver until the child turns 18. As the aunt money is clearly NOT the child's own income, and the foreign aspect makes it hard to attribute, someone may just decide that it was a gift to you, as the parent.... Maybe if they were teens, and received cash and put it in themselves...but if you are facilitating it, and they are quite young... too many what if's.... Instead, put that money into an RESP for the tax deferred / tax avoidance growth you are looking for, and it is easy with CRA.
Your suggestion of being custodian investing of kids' incomes (CTB) should work, but don't be surprised if you need to write a letter / show trace-ability of the money to have it pass muster if asked.
Lastly -- Why are you looking into this? I reviewed it for our kids and dismissed it as not being better than our RESP plan (partly because we received so little CTB and UCB due to our incomes, but that may not be true for you)...
I assume that you are planning to either over-fund their RESP past $50k maximum, (or at least past the $18k-$36k limit each for CESG funds), and / or you don't think they will go to school, so you want them to have a tax-reduced money account that they can use for anything they choose in future?
Obviously, first build a plan around maxing out the RESP "free money" while they are minors, if you think they are likely to have any sort of post- secondary.
That means creating a plan to put between $18k and $36k each into their RESP's to max out the free money... if you can do that
and build a low tax investment account in their names, that sounds great. For us, we decided that our education savings goal was less than $36k each.
Note -- As long as they take one full year (2 semesters) of post-secondary (FT) education, before the RESP plan is 35 years old, you can unlock all the money, for any purpose, really, and it is all tax free growth until withdrawn, when it is taxed in their names (similar to your CTB plan).