Insights into the risks and benefits of digital financial services for consumers

One of the consequences of social distancing and other restrictions, during the pandemic, such as those on business operating hours, is that consumers spent more of their time searching for information, shopping, and streaming entertainment on-line. With more free time on their hands and money in the bank, a larger percentage of the population took up an interest in investing, often through on-line brokerage platforms or in the cryptoasset markets.

Because consumers have been spending more time on-line since the start of the pandemic, they have been more exposed to on-line fraud. In addition to phishing and malware, consumers are dealing with known scams but in digital form, often on social media.

For some consumers, the evergrowing number of reliable and accessible information sources could lead to information overload, also known as “infobesity, where there is so much information that the consumer cannot process it all. Infobesity can lead to decision paralysis. 

In this paper the AMF make the most of their 360-degree view on the financial industry’s digital transformation to review the main changes that occurred in each of their areas of focus, describe the risk of digitalization for the consumers of financial products and services and present the potential opportunities that have been identified to mitigate these risks.



Welfare in Canada, 2020

Maytree released the 2020 edition of the Welfare in Canada report. For each province and territory, this report provides data and analysis on the total welfare income that households receiving social assistance would have qualified for in 2020, including COVID-19 pandemic-related supports.

Welfare in Canada is a series that presents the total incomes of four example households who qualify for social assistance benefits in each of Canada’s provinces and territories in a given year.

Welfare in Canada, 2020 looks at the maximum total amount that a household would have received over the course of the 2020 calendar year, assuming they had no other source of income and no assets. Some households may have received less if they had income from other sources, while some households may have received more if they had special health- or disability-related needs.

The report looks at:

  • Social assistance program eligibility tests for assets and earned income;
  • How welfare incomes vary across Canada;
  • The components of welfare incomes in each province and territory;
  • Long-term changes in welfare incomes in each province and territory; and
  • The adequacy of welfare incomes in each province compared to poverty and low-income thresholds.

In addition, this year the report includes a new section that looks at the adequacy of welfare incomes in each province over time, an analysis that hearkens back to past reports prepared by the National Council of Welfare. Also, please note that this report measures the adequacy of welfare incomes relative to both the Market Basket Measure (MBM) – Canada’s Official Poverty Line – and the Deep Income Poverty threshold (MBM-DIP), which is equivalent to 75 per cent of the MBM. This analysis will replace the low-income threshold comparisons in future reports. We hope these additions will be helpful for those using the report.

In each jurisdiction, the total welfare income for which a household is eligible depends on its specific composition. For illustrative purposes, this resource focuses on the welfare incomes of four example household types:

  1. Unattached single considered employable;
  2. Unattached single with a disability;
  3. Single parent with one child, age two; and
  4. Couple with two children, ages ten and 15.



Impact of the COVID-19 Crisis on Montreal “Cultural Communities”

This exploratory study aims to better understand the challenges experienced by members of cultural communities in Montreal, particularly the most disadvantaged groups, during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Spring of 2020.



Guide de recours : Lors d’un conflit avec un fournisseur de communication

A guide for consumers to help with problems related to communications services. Information is provided to allow consumers to better assert their rights and facilitate the resolution of a dispute with communication service providers. (Please note this is a French-language resource.)



Bien choisir son crédit : un guide pratique [A Practical Guide to Making Smart Credit Choices]

A guide comprised of 12 fact sheets for consumers to learn more about credit, grouped into the following topics: general information, warnings, credit products, and comparison tables. (Please note this is a French-language resource.)



Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada: Statistics and Research

The Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada releases statistics on insolvency (bankruptcies and proposals) numbers in Canada.

The latest statistics released on November 4, 2020 show that the number of insolvencies in Canada increased in the third quarter of 2020 by 7.9% compared to the second quarter.



Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the NEET (not in employment, education or training) indicator, March and April 2020

A fact sheet released by Statistics Canada shows that, in March and April 2020, the proportion of young Canadians who were not in employment, education or training (NEET) increased to unprecedented levels.

The COVID-19 pandemic—and the public health interventions that were put in place to limit its spread—have affected young people in a number of ways, including high unemployment rates, school closures and education moving online.



Social Assistance Summaries

The Social Assistance Summaries series tracks the number of recipients of social assistance (welfare payments) in each province and territory. It was established by the Caledon Institute of Social Policy to maintain data previously published by the federal government as the Social Assistance Statistical Report. The data is provided by provincial and territorial government officials.