To the point
Discover the Canadian Consumer Rewards Coalition's mission and the role it plays in your points and miles strategies.
What is the CCRC?
The Canadian Consumer Rewards Coalition is a non-profit organization whose mission is to represent the collective voice of Canadian consumers and protect their interests at government level.
Across the country, over 16,000 Canadian consumers support the CRCC in its mission to protect the points and rewards earned by Canadians.
The CRCC’s goal is to defend the rights of Canadian consumers, and it’s thanks to the people who show their support that it can carry more weight with the government to protect Canadians’ access to rewards. In concrete terms, the CCRC ensures that consumer issues and concerns relating to rewards are brought to the attention of regulators, elected representatives and other decision-makers.
CRCC - Helping consumers
The CCRC recognizes the importance of points and rewards in the lives of Canadians, with these numbers to back it up:
- 90% of Canadians own at least one credit card
- 72% of these credit cards earn rewards
- The average Canadian family accumulates at least $500 in points each year
Rewards are therefore an integral part of the daily lives of consumers in Canada, especially when it comes to using them for travel, groceries, gas or any other daily expense.
Milesopedia readers are well aware of this reality, and we’re always delighted to see the hundreds and even thousands of dollars that are saved thanks to points every year. The testimonials speak for themselves:
CCRC - Issues related to rewards in Canada
In Canada, retailers are lobbying the government to reduce interchange fees– the fees they must pay to credit card issuers.
However, it is these fees that enable issuers to offer advantages such as points, rewards and many other benefits (access to airport lounges, special offers, insurance, etc.) to credit card holders. If fees were to be reduced further, the rewards associated with the cards could diminish accordingly, and eventually even disappear, as has already been observed in other markets.
You’d think that reducing interchange fees would help the consumer, but after examining this situation in Australia, we see that the impact is ultimately more negative for consumers who are deprived of their rewards, as the CCRC explains.
CCRC - What can you do to support the cause?
By visiting the Canadian Consumer Rewards Coalition website, you can sign up to support CCRC’s mission.
Your registration will give you access to resources and content to help you stay on top of what’s happening in Canada and make sure you know what your rights in regards to rewards are. Most importantly, this will allow you to join a coalition to defend consumer rights and ensure that we can continue to earn points and rewards for every dollar spent. Whatever the economic context, these rewards can help improve the quality of life of Canadians.
To better understand what’s at stake, we invite you to subscribe to the CCRC website to stay up to date. In the current economic climate, where inflation is making itself felt everywhere in our daily spending, it’s all the more pertinent to defend our interests as consumers and users of points and rewards.
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