To: Premier of Alberta, Jason Kenney
Stop Credit-check abuse in Alberta
Dear Premier Kenney,
Please consider new legislation in Alberta, preventing employers, landlords and essential service providers from requiring "good credit" with a credit check prior to hiring, renting or providing essential services to Albertans.
No Albertan should be discriminated against, left homeless, jobless or without basic household services due to an adverse financial event, or because they have no credit history. Nor should Albertans with good credit be subjected to privacy invasion to obtain employment, housing or essential services.
Credit checks should be legislated as applying only to those instances when a vendor or service provider is providing Albertans with actual credit or loan products.
Why is this important?
In the spring of 2021 alone, over a quarter million Albertans lost their jobs due to Covid related employment and economic issues. As Alberta rises from these ashes, many affected Albertans will face new financial challenges - including home foreclosures, evictions, vehicle repossession, credit card and loan forfeitures - personal and business. Each event negatively affecting the credit ratings of the individual and requiring time to resolve.
Newly graduated individuals will also enter the employment and rental markets with no active credit history.
The increasing arbitrary practise of credit checks for employment, housing and basic services will paralyze the lives of so many Albertans. In spite that none of these services are offering a credit or loan product.
Credit checks and credit information bureaus were created to affirm payment worthiness for credit and loan products, not as means for discrimination, invasion of privacy, to deny basic services or to justify pre-penalizing potential customers of these services.
Alberta's population needs to know our right to rebound is protected so that we can get on with the business of building and rebuilding our future.