By Barry Rieder

Through a local banking project in Jane Finch, six major banks were convinced to fund community workers to train bank employees to better meet the needs of low-income, culturally diverse communities. One of the highlights of this project is that national banking regulations were changed so that it is now illegal to refuse someone a bank account just because they have limited income or are on social assistance. In celebrating the success of this project at an Annual General Meeting of one of the participating agencies, I had the fortunate opportunity of eating a meal with one of the bank personnel from the head office of the Royal Bank. As I spoke of the many exciting projects that I'm involved in and my role as being a resource to the community, I never realized what kind of impact that I made on this person. He went away from that meeting and amidst his banking circles he started saying, "I met this Minister without portfolio and if the Church can dedicate a Minister to work with the community without a congregation, maybe the Bank should think about providing a bank manager to work with the community without a bank." And thus the Community Banker Project became born.

A bank manager had been seconded, for two years, to work with the community as a resource in helping to develop local community economic initiatives. In addition to this the bank funded a community banker apprentice position to work on the project after the two year period. Not only did they do this project in Jane Finch but they supported four other similar projects in low income communities in Toronto, Montreal and Regina. In a time of bank closures and huge profits, I am still a little skeptical. But with banks reinvesting back into communities and beginning to wrestle with the systemic issues of poverty maybe there is hope that banks can change.