Canada's Hours Bank. Connecting, Building and Securing Our Lives What is the Hours Bank? Here are the details. We naturally help those in need. But often our social circles are too small and our care systems too costly or limited. When we need help, we have no one to turn to. Welcome to the Hours Bank. Help someone in need, bank your hours, get help when you need it. That help could be as simple as a car repair, planting a garden, or solving a computer problem. In social security, parents spend about two decades caring for kids, but in old age require less than a decade of care. The Hours Bank is our natural system of care for friends, family and the living ecosystems that support us. It’s care across the generations. How much does it cost? We want this to be free to use. It's run by volunteers, who also bank their hours. We naturally help others, it’s not about money. But we do have servers, requiring expertise, and real bills that come in. Once fully operational, we can do this for under 25 cents per Canadian a year. Why is it needed? We needed a fast crisis-response system to deal with urgent issues work, food and housing security. We needed a self-serve system to get help to anyone anywhere. Easy to start and understand. For those in need, free to use. Flexible enough to meet local community needs, adaptable for friends and family. Since helping people is a fundamental human freedom, the best way to respond was to simply use our existing Canadian Charter Rights and Freedoms. It’s your right and freedom to create and use your own local community Hours Bank. We aim to make this easy. Just use our ideas, logos and badges to get going. Having a freedom means not having to ask permission. How does it work? Your time is valuable, as valuable as paid work. And just like paid work, you record your time and what you did, and the person you did the work for signs off on it. You can work alone or in groups. You can solve specific issues, or tackle every aspect of life at once. We aim to protect life, and the basis of life, for everyone, by doing needed and valuable work. You are free to do anything that meets essential human needs, addresses critical issues defending of a fair and sustainable future for our kids, or protects and builds life, liberty and security of the person. The reasonable limit in the Charter is consideration of impact on others, as the basis of life and law. Can I start now? Yes. There's no need to wait. The Hours Bank is designed for immediate do-it-yourself use anywhere you live. Consider these FAQs as your personal DIY action kit. It can be as easy as gathering friends and family, and creating a personal life action plan to ensure you all have a good future. Under the full set of rights and freedoms of our Canadian Charter, no one can stop you from doing good work that supports life in any way, shape or form you like. Use the Hours Bank now as you see fit to meet personal or local community needs. Bank your hours on paper. Add friends to your group. This is an emergency. Don't wait for a 'official' national structure to be built. You can use the badges, logos, ideas and templates on the website immediately. What's the big idea? Often we help friends in trade for pizza. In return, they help you later. You can give freely without expectation of return, or after getting help return the favour. The Hours Bank lets you return the favour to anyone. You may need computer help, but that's not a skill your friends have. Now you can access the broader pool of smart, caring, skilled Canadians who understand our social fabric of caring connectivity. Most Canadians don't think twice about pulling someone out of a ditch. What about our social contract between youth with brains and muscle and seniors with life skills and how-to knowledge? Here, we think across the generations. Is this private or government? Neither. The Hours Bank is a public-government partnership. It operates at a parental level of concern as a constitutional activity above politics. Parents are everywhere. We're all concerned with the future our kids face. We are kind caring Canadians ready to help, dedicated to maintaining healthy social structures, working to defend the lives and future of our children. Defending life, liberty and security of the person is our Charter Section 7 Right and Freedom, and also the greatest challenge of our time. How can I use my time? How you use your time in this life is a highly personal matter of choice, critical to who you are and how you define your purpose. To help someone in need, or to care for the Earth, is a Freedom of Expression (Charter Section 2) natural to friends and family in caring community. If you care for bees, plant trees or defend healthy waterways, doing that work banks you Ecohours. However you define family, wherever you live, whoever you are and whatever your situation, there is something you can do to help. What would a caring parent do, seeing the declining state of their lives and the world, knowing from their own lives what their children face? Be smart and strong in addressing this question of personal and planetary survival. What kinds of work can I do? As the person offering help, it is up to you to decide if the work is needed and necessary. You must distinguish between needs and wants, and decide if this is something you can do or want to do. The work must build sustainable life security of essential human needs. It could build food security or housing security, or address critical issues of transportation and energy. You can helping a senior around the house, or teach skills to meet an educational need. Later, when you need help learning something, you can use your hours to get help. We call these Education Hours. Care for living ecosystem are EcoHours. Can I work with others in groups on projects? Please do! You could build anything from a greenhouse to a food storage root cellar to an online platform for people wanting to connect with others on projects that could turn into green careers. for example, you could visit local farms to see if there's a project you could do (e.g. set up a mushroon growing operation, or a sawmill); we call this Farm Assist. A component of that work might be paid, and you are free to make deals with the farmer. Whatever work you do to create a fair and sustainable future for all is good. Does it include official volunteer work? Yes. If you volunteer at a hospital, or in a community garden, or in any of the hundreds of volunteer programs available, start recording your Hours Bank Social Security hours. One day, you may draw on these hours when you need help. If you need community hours for high school course credits, you can bank those too. How valuable is my time? In paid work, your time is valued in dollars per hour. It may be undervalued or overvalued. If you are a skilled social organizer, it may make little sense to use your time and talents working at an individual level. But later in life, if you are sick, the time an individual spends to take care of you is incredibly valuable and vastly appreciated. As an organizer, what you can do in a short time with the talents you have can have tremendous impact for many others through time. That is your gift to the world. In the context of a life well lived, from birth to old age and all that lies in between, what of that was most valuable? It may be care. We leave it up to each individual to use their time wisely. Do the best you can with what you have, that's all that's required. Is it safe? All the normal rules of social safety apply. Trust your instincts, stay sane, safe and smart. Organize parent-directed activities or run community events such as work parties with picnic party lunches. If you're not sure, ask a friend or parent. Remember, this is work. Pack a lunch, bring any tools you need, arrange transportation, have a plan, learn the skills, be polite and professional. Stay Covid-safe, work with friends and family. What the Hours Bank can and cannot be: The Hours Bank must be free to use. It can be run by volunteers banking their hours. It is a Constitutional Activity, meaning it is your fundamental right to act freely on any issue of life security within reason and without having to ask permission. Our Charter is clear: if someone tries to prevent you from doing good work essential to life, liberty and security of the person, there must be very good reason (the burden of proof is on them, not you (Charter Sections 1 and 7)). The Hours Bank cannot be a government program subject to the whim and will of politicians. It must not be bought out, sold out, commercialized, crushed and ruined. It must be free from ads and special interests to stay healthy and strong. How does the Hours Bank work with existing systems? There are many organizations with volunteers, critical to building a caring society that protects the vulnerable. That work should be recognized and rewarded. All volunteers in all organizations should be free to bank their hours. Helping someone in need is an essential form of self-directed self-determination, a way we communicate care in a free, fair and just democratic society. At issue here is our children's rights to life. We must change how we live for their sake. In 1982, Canada changed its systems from British law based on the use of force for control, plunder and exploitation to a caring legal structure based on clearly Canadian Constitutional principles and practices of personal and public well-being. Ministries were created corresponding to essential human needs with social services structured to maintain a healthy society. Education, healthcare, innovation, community services, work and safety and so on. Healthcare, for example, is essentially an hours bank system of social benefit with a paid component. We work and pay into it to have work done for us. Within that is a significant volunteer aspect, but volunteers should at least be building social security. How is the Hours Bank protected? The best protection is you. You decide the best use of your time. You decide if the help you provide is needed and necessary. It’s your right to ask for help, your freedom to offer help. Here, we found unconstitutional limits placed on non-profit corporations, with for-profit corporations retaining the full set of social and economic rights and freedoms. We chose to federally incorporate as a limited-profit social enterprise using the Canadian Charter as our Charter. Welcome to the Company of Canadians Inc., your company of family and friends. Using reason and reasonable limits to add essential rights as needed (e.g. fact and evidence presented as a strong and compelling case), we stay strong and free under the protective umbrella of law.

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