Discover financial empowerment resources
Discover financial empowerment resources
The annual BBB Scam Tracker Risk Report report analyzes data that individuals and businesses submitted to BBB Scam TrackerSM (BBB.org/ScamTracker) in 2023. The findings shed light on how scams are perpetrated, who is being targeted, which scams have the greatest impact, and which behaviors and...
FAIR Canada engaged The Strategic Counsel (TSC), a national market research firm, to undertake focus groups to better understand Canadian investors. The overall purpose of this research is to provide a broad portrait of Canadian investors including their knowledge, attitudes, behaviours, and...
Canada's homeless encampments are a national human rights crisis. A growing number of people in Canada are having to live in tents or informal shelters to survive due to a lack of affordable housing, limited support services, and nowhere safe to go. Recognizing the severity of this crisis, the...
Longevity literacy is an understanding of how long people tend to live upon reaching retirement age. It is particularly important since retirement income security requires planning, saving, and preparing for a period that is uncertain in length. This matters because longevity literacy is...
The National Housing Strategy Act (NHSA) of 2019 introduced landmark human rights mechanisms aimed at addressing systemic housing issues in Canada. These mechanisms enable rights holders who have borne the brunt of Canada’s housing crisis to have their voices heard, claim their rights, and offer...
This report presents the findings of research aimed at advancing social innovation and social finance in Canada. The study focused on understanding the enablers and barriers of social finance, as well as exploring why social purpose organizations (SPOs) engage in social finance. The research also...
This study examined the financial lives of retired Canadians and those approaching retirement. While most retired Canadians said they are in a strong financial position, a concerning 15% of retirees rated their financial situation as poor. Almost one third of retirees reported their monthly...
This report provides insights from the project, including highlighting the challenges people with disabilities in British Columbia face in their journey to get income benefits, the opportunities to remove those barriers and implications for future benefits design. The demand for access to benefits...
The overall purpose of the collaborative project between Seneca College and Prosper Canada was to build a supportive booking system for tax clinics serving low-income...
If you work with people in Canada living on low incomes, you can play a meaningful role in supporting access to benefits regardless of your expertise or sector. Prosper Canada identified 36 barriers that individuals living on low incomes face when trying to access benefits. More than half of the...
Since 2020, the Bank of Canada has engaged with Canadians, the financial industry and civil society groups to better understand how a digital version of the Canadian dollar might affect everyone. Bilateral and roundtable discussions were held, as well as demographically representative focus groups...
Working poverty is pervasive, racialized, and until the pandemic, was increasing in Toronto and across Canada. Until the pandemic, this increase was counterintuitive, during 2006 to 2016, as most of this ten-year period had been characterized by one of the most prolonged economic recoveries in...
The Expanding Economic Opportunity Through Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (EEOVITA) cohort has been working to identify and engage targeted, underserved populations most at risk for missing out on the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC) benefit. This project, which began in January 2022 and concludes...
The Community Volunteer Income Tax Program (CVITP) is a partnership between the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and local community organizations. The program is intended to ensure that all taxpayers have equal access to the tax system. In Grey and Bruce Counties, 14 community organizations provide...
Widespread household financial insecurity is an undeniably urgent crisis in the United States today. A stunning 51 percent of U.S. households have expenses that are equal to or greater than their income, and 55 percent lack the necessary savings to weather a simultaneous income drop and expense...
Food Banks Canada's all-new Poverty Report Cards initiative grades how poverty reduction efforts are going in the provincial, territorial, and federal governments. The report cards will help policymakers and decision-makers at all levels of government gauge their performance in the fight against...
To learn more about Canada's food and seed security, read the SeedChange Impact report 2022. This report shows how and where donations were distributed in 2022, the impact of their work and the global projects they are involved...
The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, social unrest, and a severely distressed economy poses a real and significant crisis to an already fragile safety net for the 1.2 million people that comprise Canada’s diverse Black communities. The aim of this report is to provide a systematic analysis...
As cash use, access, and acceptance declines in Canada, vulnerable demographics are at risk of being left behind. For many, cash is more than just a method of payment. The growing pattern of electronic payments means that cash could become more scarce, threatening those who rely on it. While a...
When immigrants arrive in Canada, they face many financial challenges. From opening a bank account to using a credit card, from buying a house to paying for insurance, they may find it difficult to navigate the nuances of Canadian markets. Newcomers rely on industry professionals to assist them in...
At first glance, the latest FDIC National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households findings are encouraging: rates of un- and underbanked households reached historic lows after trending downward for the last decade. Yet, a lack of access to quality banking remains a problem for nearly 25...
Crypto products are in news stories and in a lot of advertising. But what do Canadians really know about crypto investments and how they work and how they are regulated? The OSC’s Crypto Asset Survey provides useful insights about the crypto ownership and knowledge of Canadians. Key...
For some individuals with a disability, the main labour market challenge is to find employment. Others may find it difficult to retain their jobs or qualify for promotion opportunities. This study offers important new insights into the life-long evolution of the earnings of individuals whose...
This discussion paper begins by explaining what is commonly understood as child care and how child care expenses currently enter the market basket measure (MBM) methodology. It then describes an alternative approach to account for child care expenses by incorporating them as a separate component...
Food insecurity—the inadequate access to food due to financial constraints—affects 1 in 6 households in Canada, with serious health implications. Family benefit programs supplementing income have shown potential in mitigating the risk of food insecurity, but there is little understanding of...