According to a survey by TransUnion, a Canada-based credit reporting agency, 60 percent of Canadians said they were targeted with online, email, phone call, or text messaging fraud in the last three months, of which 10 percent fell victim.

he important question is what is our recipe for all Canadians to thrive? I believe Paul Taylor, Executive Director of FoodShare has insight into the right ingredients.

In his recent interview published in LiisBeth, he discusses his focus on implementing standard-of-living wages and a wage compression policy where FoodShare has tied compensation for the lowest wage worker to the highest. This means that the Executive Director can make no more than three times what the lowest paid worker makes.

These are critically important initiatives – they ensure that people are valued for their contribution and not their power to influence the allocation of resources or their ability to forego lower paid jobs and invest time and money in accessing higher paid employment.

Even more importantly, they demonstrate FoodShare’s commitment to a socially just future and enable the organization to drive change in a manner that is consistent with desired outcomes. I believe commitment and congruence between actions and outcomes are 2 core ingredients in the recipe for building a society that enables all Canadians to be financially resilient and thrive.

Sometimes I think of financial resiliency as a real-life Super Mario game. In the video game, you are trying to move forward and get bombarded with piranha plants, ice boulders, firebars. In real life, there is precarious employment, skyrocketing housing costs, post-secondary education, privilege, systemic racism, loaded dice, fixed fights.…. It often seems Leonard Cohen might be right in saying “everybody knows, the poor stay poor, the rich, get rich”.

Richard is a 25-year-old living with a roommate in Toronto. He previously worked in the restaurant industry earning enough to support himself and enjoy some travel. Like many Canadians he has lost his job and has been surviving on government supports. He decided to start taking some university courses this September given that he was home. He is increasingly getting concerned about his future and how to make ends meet once government supports end.

A recent analysis by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) found that “while millions of Canadians lost their jobs because of the COVID-19 pandemic, “the country’s top 20 billionaires have amassed an average of nearly $2 billion each in wealth”[1]. It’s not only the ultra-rich that are doing well. Those of us with jobs are not spending our money on gas, 407, evenings out or holidays. In addition, if we have wealth generating assets - we have mostly seen an increase in their value. Average Canadian home prices were up 17% in December 2020 vs the same period in 2019[2] and although the S&P/TSX Composite Index dropped 37% during the year, it climbed back up to finish the year with at 2.17% gain[3] while the S&P 500 delivered a 16% return over the previous year[4]. This indicates that lower income Canadians without financial or real assets are bearing the brunt of the economic consequences associated with COVID-19.

Finishing up school can be both exciting and scary.  It is a celebration of years of learning, studying and plain old hard work.  It is also the entrance into the ever-changing world of work.  With youth unemployment rate at 11%[1], this can be daunting.  From side hustle to precariousness to endless job applications, figuring out the best way to build a career is like a challenging maze at best.

I spoke to Dianne about student success strategies, common pitfalls and the breadth of resources available to support students in career planning and am sharing her insights below. 

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is shining a light on financial precarity among Canadians. Prior to this crisis, 44% of Canadians said it would be difficult to meet their financial obligations if their pay was late, and more than 1 in 10 families with debt skipped or delayed a non-mortgage payment. COVID-19 has had an enormous impact on our economy, with 5.5 million Canadian workers affected by the shutdown between February to April. The unemployment rate was at a “record high” of 13.7% in May.

On the individual front, peer-to-peer interventions may have potential. They can build individual capabilities, address issues of shame, and support individual action. They can help individuals manoeuvre complicated administrative systems and build self-advocacy skills. In time, taking part in such interventions could help support people to join movements that lead to system change.

In a span of weeks, the Covid19 crisis has wreaked havoc on our health systems, communities and economy. It has unmasked the pre-existing vulnerabilities and inequalities in our system.

The risks of contracting the coronavirus and the individual impacts of the collective crisis vary greatly. At one extreme, you have individuals and families whose net worth has been pummeled by a drop in the stock market, yet still have the financial means and or secure employment to isolate themselves comfortably, order food, and wait out the crisis. At the other end of the continuum, you have 53% of Canadians who live paycheque to paycheque. This group is over half of our population and is made up of a wide variety of individuals and families.

If we think about this in terms of personal finance, being able to achieve one’s goals is dependent on skillfully managing a significant number of areas.  These range from having a plan that advances towards our goals, creating a budget for those goals and ensuring we stick to that budget, to honing in on careers and jobs that are fairly well remunerated, negotiating our salaries, using debt to help us not hold us back and making wise investments with the money we do have. 

Each of these areas is unique and requires a breadth of different skills and activities.   So developing a plan that gets me to my goals requires me to spend time thinking about the life I would like to lead, researching and understanding the costs associated with that life, having clarity on my passions, skills and resources so I can figure out how I can pay for it, and learning about how others have gotten there.   Some of the key skills here are self-awareness, critical thinking, planning and problem solving. 

We know the struggles students face with tuition fees increasing 40%[1] in the last decade, increase in precarious work and frozen minimum wages that are far from living wages. 

In trying to help students succeed within this challenging environment, Strive has been identifying and sharing strategies students are using to manage their money and achieve their goals.  We hosted Finesse Your Finances at York University and gathered great insights into what students are doing today to set themselves up for success.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said that the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.  It is evident that Canadian students are dreaming big. 

Haiyan, discussed how empowerment is critical to managing student finances.

In interviewing Alyssa, she discusses the importance of self-advocacy in success.  She says, “In some of our greatest struggles, we find our greatest strengths”. Advocating for ourselves can help us find those greatest strengths. 

Here are 5 easy steps that can help you flex your self-advocacy muscles and make progress towards your goals.

The World Economic Forum predicts that it will take 170 years for economic parity to be achieved[2].  What are our plans to close the gender wage gap in under 170 years??  In the spirit of meaningful progress, I have highlighted three meaningful actions most individuals within an organization we can take to advance the issue.

We’ve all seen the numbers - the housing market is racing forward as incomes are left in the dust with little to no growth and an increase in precarious work. A member of my Strive group recently asked for some insights on how to get into the housing market. I thought back to the many Strive interviews I have conducted as well as my experiences and pulled together a top 6 list that may be helpful if you are in the process of trying to make that leap.