Getting Your Money Back: An Investor’s Guide to Navigating Canada’s Complaint System

If you have a complaint, it is important you fully understand your rights, so that you don’t feel taken advantage of during the process.

After reading the guide, you will:
● Know how and who to contact when you first make a complaint.
● Understand your basic rights during the process, including how much time your bank or investment firm has to resolve your complaint.
● Know when and where to bring your complaint, if you are not satisfied with your bank’s or investment firm’s response.
● Learn what other options may be available to you, if you are still not happy with the outcome.
● Be aware of time limits that may affect you.

Disponible en Francais 



Canada workers benefit

The Canada workers benefit (CWB) is a refundable tax credit to help individuals and families who are working and earning a low income.

The CWB has two parts: a basic amount and a disability supplement.

You can claim the CWB when you file your income tax return. Learn more including eligibility requirements, how to apply and how much you can expect to receive by clicking on the Get It button below. 



Retirement savings course

The Association of Canadian Pension Management (ACPM) launched its new Retirement Savings Course to empower Canadians wishing to learn the basics of retirement savings and to foster awareness of the importance of retirement income savings at any age.

Course highlights:

  • Self-paced learning on basic retirement savings concepts in simple language
  • Six bite-sized modules - each taking about 20-30 minutes to completed
  • Suitable for any age (in particular, those in the workforce starting to think about retirement savings)
  • No prior knowledge or qualifications are required

The free course will provide you an overview of the building blocks of retirement savings and insight into the role that government pensions and workplace pension plans may have for your future or that of those you care about.



Connecting families initiative

Daily aspects of Canadians' lives are increasingly touched by digital technology, and access to high-speed Internet has become an essential service and a key driver for improving our economic and social well-being.

The Government of Canada originally announced Connecting Families in Budget 2017 to help bridge the digital divide for Canadian families who struggled to afford access to home Internet. 

Learn more about the next phase of this initiative.



About the Canada Learning Bond

The Canada Learning Bond (CLB) is money that the Government adds to a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) for children from low-income families. This money helps to pay the costs of a child’s full- or part-time studies after high school at apprenticeship programs, CEGEPs, trade schools, colleges, or universities. Learn more about eligibility requirements and the application process using this website.



Financial consumer protection framework

This presentation provides information about the FCAC's public awareness strategy for Canada's new Financial Consumer Protection Framework including an overview of FCAC's planned activities and resources and highlights the importance of collective action to inform Canadians. 

Additional promotional toolkits can be found on the FCAC website. 



Recognizing and responding to economic abuse

With speakers from CCFWE, Johannah Brockie - Program Manager for Advocacy and System Change and Jessica Tran - Program Manager for Education and Awareness, this webinar will guide you through the definition of economic abuse, how to identify an economic abuser, impacts of economic abuse, Covid-19 impacts, tactics, what you should do if you are a victim of economic abuse, and key safety tips.

Economic Abuse occurs when a domestic partner interferes with a partner’s access to finances, employment or social benefits, such as fraudulently racking up credit card debt in their partner’s name or preventing their partner from going to work has a devastating effect on victims and survivors of domestic partner violence, yet it’s rarely talked about in Canada.

It’s experienced by women from all backgrounds, regions and income levels but women from marginalized groups, including newcomers, refugees, racialized and Indigenous women, are at a higher risk of economic abuse due to other systemic factors.



Five Good Ideas about using human-centred design for social change

With a growing number of barriers to accessing vital services, we need to think critically about accessibility and people’s services experiences in the social and public sector. Human-centred design is an approach which centres the voices and lived experiences of people who are impacted in the design or re-design of a program or service.

During this session, Galen MacLusky and Nandita Bijur of Prosper Canada share the mindsets and principles that have helped their organization introduce and integrate human-centred design into their projects. Specifically, you will hear how they used human-centred design in their work integrating financial empowerment into municipal services and in designing impactful frontline services for people living on low incomes. Human-centred design can often feel overwhelming, but this session will help you think about small shifts you can implement in your practice and decision-making that could make a big difference.



Canada learning bond for 18 to 20 year olds

The Canada Learning Bond is money that the Government of Canada adds to a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP) to help pay the costs of full- or part-time studies after high school. If you are eligible for the Canada Learning Bond and have not already received it in an RESP, you will receive $500 deposited into your RESP, plus an additional $100 for every subsequent year that you were eligible, up to the age of 15. This money can help cover the costs of tuition, books, tools, transportation, and housing. You do not need to put any money into the RESP to receive the Canada Learning Bond.

This single page insert tells you everything you need to know to apply for the Canada learning bond. 

Disponible en Français.



Money Mentors’ free financial education programs

Money Mentors’ free online courses are available to everyone. The 1-2 hour narrated courses make it easy to learn at your own pace. These online courses provide the same great content as our in-person presentations, but at the touch of a finger.

They cover a variety of topics including budgeting, debt, credit, fraud, life events and one course even focuses on managing money and understanding credit for high school students. 

Read more about Money Mentors' free financial literacy presentations to provide K-12 students with money concepts and skills here.



Designing a remote financial help service

Amidst the COVID-19 lockdown, community service agencies across Canada have had to rapidly adapt the way they engage and support people in the community. ​ A growing number of Canadians need (or soon will need) support as they deal with the financial strain brought on by an unprecedented global pandemic. ​Community agencies would like to help connect people to support and there is increased interest in how to deliver that support remotely. ​

Over a nine-month period beginning mid 2020, and with funding from Capital One, Prosper Canada worked alongside service design firm Bridgeable and community agencies in Manitoba, British Columbia, and Ontario to study the remote delivery of financial help services in each setting. The research was followed by a period of learning, sharing and data collection reflected in the reports and toolkit published here.



Reports
These slide decks describe the goals and outcomes of this project.
Socialization deck: Supporting the design of a remote financial help service (Bridgeable)

Client Journey maps
These journey maps offer a visual explanation of the process used by the 3 participating community agencies offering one-on-one client support.
Family Services of Greater Vancouver
SEED Winnipeg
Thunder Bay Counselling

Toolkit
This toolkit was developed in collaboration with community partners, and shares tools for coaches and clients in the virtual one-on-one process.
Virtual service delivery tools (Toolkit)

National Housing Strategy

The National Housing Strategy is a 10-year, $70+ billion plan creating a new generation of housing in Canada giving more Canadians a place to call home.



Change Matters Volume 2: Assets

This is the second brief in a new series from The Financial Clinic. Change Matters leverages the data gathered through our revolutionary financial coaching platform, Change Machine, alongside the voices, wisdom, and lived experiences of Change Machine customers. We hope that our action oriented analysis will lead to positive social change. We believe we have a responsibility to ask the right questions, to use our data for good, and to inspire products, practice, and policy innovations that centralize the needs of the working-poor in building economic mobility.



Helping financial empowerment champions deliver critical services to low-income Canadians

Service design consultancy Bridgeable provides an overview of the project partnership with Prosper Canada in April 2020 to take a design sprint approach in providing remote tax-filing and benefits application service solution.

Over the course of four consecutive days, Bridgeable worked with eighteen financial empowerment champion (FEC) partners to generate solutions to four key aspects for remote service delivery:

  1. Communicating with clients
  2. Verifying client ID
  3. Obtaining consent or signatures
  4. Obtaining or accessing client information



Virtual tax filing: Piloting a new way to file taxes for homebound seniors

WoodGreen Community Services, a large multi-service frontline social service agency in Toronto, provides free tax preparation services year-round to people living on low incomes. WoodGreen was interested in designing a novel solution to address the tax filing needs of homebound seniors who are unable to access WoodGreen’s free in-person tax-preparation services due to physical or mental health challenges. Specifically, WoodGreen wanted to know… How might we provide high-quality professional tax preparation services to all clients whether or not they are onsite? Prosper Canada and a leading commercial tax preparation software company partnered with WoodGreen Community Services in order to answer this design question.



Supported Self-File: Piloting a new way to empower individuals to file taxes independently

Many frontline community organizations provide free tax preparation services to people living on low incomes across Canada using a variety of methods. However, when COVID-19 struck, a large majority of agencies offering free tax-filing supports were forced to close their doors and halt in-person services. Non-profit organizations, EBO (Ottawa) and WoodGreen Community Services (Toronto) with a long-standing history of delivering tax-filing supports, needed to explore alternative models that catered to the different needs of their clientele.

Prosper Canada and Intuit, a leading commercial tax preparation software company, partnered with WoodGreen and EBO, in order to answer this design question.

These journey maps describe the process of this service flow, from intake to client sessions and post-session activities.