Campaigns
Fair Fees – Frais équitable
Fair Banking – Our Fair Banking campaign seeks to make mainstream banking fairer, while also fighting to end predatory lending and encourage the creation of alternation banking products for low and moderate income earners. Learn more about our Fair Banking campaign here
Internet for All – Access to the internet has become a necessity, and the high cost of service affects access to opportunities in the job market, in school, and in many other aspects of daily life. ACORN Canada members demand $10/month high speed internet for low income families as part of our Internet for All campaign. Take action on closing the digital divide – sign the petition!
Regulate Remittances – Remittances (sending money overseas through money transfer organizations like Western Union) and payday loans are big business in Canada, and thousands of Canadians are getting gouged by companies charging exorbitant fees for these services. ACORN Canada members work for the regulation of these fees and fairness in the remittance and payday loan industries.
Healthy Homes – Habitation saine
Every person deserves affordable, livable housing. In many low income neighbourhoods, tenants live with mold, pests, broken elevators, and other challenges because landlords will not do the repairs needed. ACORN Canada members fight for landlord licensing, building inspections, and stronger enforcement of maintenance rules and by-laws.
Childcare
Child care fees in Ontario have reached crisis level. Our province is home to the top eight cities with the highest child care fees in Canada. In Toronto alone, there are 14, 365 children on the waiting list for fee subsidy. Many parents do not even bother putting their children on the waiting list; they know it will take years before their children are enrolled in an affordable, high quality child care program. As such, the number of parents in need of affordable child care is likely even higher than the waiting lists demonstrate.
Toronto cannot wait ten years for child care. We need affordable, accessible, high quality child care NOW!
Fair Wage – Salaire-subsistance
Today in Canada, more 1.3 million of our children live in poverty. Low wages remain a significant barrier to all Canadians achieving self sufficiency through work. According to Statscan, more than a million people across the country worked for minimum wages or less last year, the fourth year in a row that this shamefully persistent number has been above the one million mark. While levels of education and experience have increased and productivity has grown, real wages remained stagnant from 1981 to 2004 while median wages have grown at a snail’s pace (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives). Clearly, low wages are a large part of why so many working Canadians remain poor.
Despite the need to address working poverty and the popular support for government action to do so, Canada’s elected leadership has been disturbingly timid on the wage-raising front. No recent increase to the minimum wage or poverty reduction strategy seriously addresses the issue of the sinking wage floor.
Other – Autres
International campaigns, community actions, and other items that don’t come under our main campaign areas.