Our mission

Helping Canadian households build wealth they control. Not wealth they are told about once a year in a statement, and not wealth they have to ask somebody else for permission to use.

A mission page is usually where a firm says something agreeable and moves on. This one is written to be checked. It states what we work on, what we place and under whose authority, where our authority stops, how we are paid, and the kind of household this does not suit. Where a claim could be read as a promise, it is not made.

The mission, stated plainly

Canadian Wealth Creation Centre Inc. exists to help Canadian households and the businesses they own build capital they can reach, on terms they set, and pass on with the least possible damage. That is the whole of it.

Notice what the sentence does not say. It does not say retirement, because a household that organises its capital well is better off at every age and not only after sixty five. It does not say saving, because saving describes what is set aside and says nothing about what happens to it afterwards. And it does not say investing, because our authority is an insurance licence and the securities side of a household belongs to somebody registered for it.

What is left is narrower and more useful: the structure a family’s money sits in, what that structure lets them do when a decision has to be made, and what it costs them to have it.

What we mean by the word wealthy

The word gets used as a synonym for a large number, which makes it useless. A household can earn a great deal and control almost none of it. Another can earn far less and be able to write a cheque on a Tuesday without asking anyone.

We use the word to mean something specific and testable. A household is wealthy to the extent that it holds capital it can reach, on terms known in advance, without needing an approval from a third party at the moment it is needed. That definition has no dollar figure in it on purpose. It can be answered by a family with a modest premium and failed by a family with a large portfolio, and both of those outcomes are common.

It also explains why so much of our published work is about structure rather than about return. Return is what capital earns. Control is what capital can be used for, and the second question is the one that decides most of what happens in an ordinary household.

The question nobody asked you

Over a working life a household finances a house, some vehicles, an education or two, a renovation, occasionally a business. Each of those is arranged separately, years apart, usually in a hurry, and nobody ever adds them up.

Add them up and a pattern appears that has nothing to do with how the family invests. A large share of everything the household earns leaves it as interest and lender profit, permanently, and it leaves whether or not the markets had a good decade. Statistics Canada publishes the household debt to disposable income ratio quarterly, and the direction it has run for a generation is not a secret. We do not print the figure here, because it changes and a page that prints it will be wrong within months. Read it at the source.

What are you financing, and for whom?

That question is the beginning of every engagement we take. It is not a rhetorical device. It has an arithmetic answer for any particular household, the answer is usually larger than the household expects, and it is answerable before anybody discusses a product.

Seven areas of work, one system

The practice is organised into seven areas. Each is a specialisation in its own right. The reason they sit in one firm is that the value shows up where they meet: a contract designed with the estate in mind, registered accounts sequenced against the corporate structure, protection sized to what the family actually stands to lose.

1. Financial sovereigntyThe integrating layer. Participating whole life insurance used as the foundation of a capital structure the household controls, coordinated with the registered accounts and the corporate structure rather than sitting beside them. This is the work the rest of the site calls the IFS™ strategy.
2. Wealth creationThe registered account playbook. RRSP, TFSA, FHSA, RESP and RDSP, executed in the right order for a household’s actual tax position rather than in the order the accounts were invented.
3. Life insuranceTerm, permanent and participating. The question is what the family stands to lose, for how long, and what it should reasonably cost to protect. Term is not a lesser product and permanent is not automatically better.
4. Living benefitsCritical illness, disability and long term care coverage: the events that break a plan while the person is still alive. This is the part of protection planning most households skip, and the part a group plan most often leaves short.
5. Group insuranceBoth sides of the plan. Design and review for employers, and for plan members the plainer service of explaining what their plan actually covers, when it starts, and what happens to it when they leave.
6. Investment optionsEducation on how segregated funds, mutual funds, ETFs and guaranteed investment certificates differ in cost, guarantees, tax treatment and what happens on death. Where an insurance based option suits, we can place it. Where a security suits, we teach and step aside.
7. Succession planningThe will, the designations, the ownership structures, the tax that arises at death, and the sequence a family faces in the weeks after. Carried out alongside the family’s lawyer or notary and accountant, never instead of them.

What we place, and under whose authority

The seven areas above describe the work. The list below describes the contracts, because a mission page that names no products is a mission page that cannot be checked.

CWCC places life insurance in every ordinary Canadian form: term at ten, twenty and thirty years, term to one hundred, universal life, whole life and participating whole life. On the living benefits side, critical illness insurance, disability insurance and long term care insurance. Where health history closes the ordinary doors, simplified issue and guaranteed issue contracts, which we describe honestly as narrower and more expensive rather than as a shortcut. For businesses, key person coverage, buy and sell funding, corporate owned policies and the immediate financing arrangement. For families with particular needs, final expense coverage, coverage for children, coverage for seniors, mortgage protection, travel insurance, super visa insurance and health and dental coverage. On the accumulation side, segregated fund contracts and annuities. And group benefits plans for employers.

All of that is placed under an insurance licence, which is what CWCC holds. It is the reason the list contains contracts and not securities.

Where our authority stops

A firm that never tells you what it cannot do has told you nothing useful about what it can. Four boundaries, stated here rather than in a footer.

• SecuritiesCWCC is not registered with the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization. Mutual funds, exchange traded funds and individual securities held through a dealer are outside what we may advise on. We publish education about them, and the advice belongs to somebody registered.
• TaxEvery tax sentence we write ends at a qualified tax professional. We coordinate with your accountant, and we do not replace them.
• LawWills, mandates, trusts and shareholder agreements are drafted by a lawyer or a notary. We work alongside them on the insurance that funds what those documents say.
• Reserved titlesIn Quebec, titles such as financial planner are protected by law and reserved to those who hold them. We do not use them, and neither should any firm that does not hold them.

What we will not do to get there

A mission is only as good as what it rules out. Five things we will not do, in any meeting, in any document, on any page of this site.

1. We will not promise a returnNobody can. A participating contract has a guaranteed column, which is the insurer’s contractual obligation, and a dividend, which the insurer’s board declares one year at a time and does not guarantee. We will show you both columns and we will not blur them together.
2. We will not rank an insurance contract against a registered accountAn RRSP and a participating policy are built for different jobs, and a household usually needs both. Any presentation that sets one against the other is selling something.
3. We will not describe the practice, its services or a policy in the language of bankingAn insurance policy is not a bank account, a premium is not a deposit, and a policy loan is issued by the insurer rather than by you to yourself. The words matter because the difference matters.
4. We will not make the case for something without also making the case againstEvery long guide on this site carries the objections in the same pages as the argument, not in a footnote at the end.
5. We will not advise outside our licenceSee the boundaries above. A referral is a better answer than an opinion we are not entitled to give.

Who this mission does not serve

We would rather say this here than in a fourth meeting.

Why a family practice

Canadian Wealth Creation Centre Inc. was incorporated in 2016 and works from Laval, Quebec, in English and in French, with clients across several provinces. It is a small firm and it is a family one.

That is relevant for one reason rather than for sentiment. The structures described on this site are measured in decades. A contract designed this year is meant to be reviewed in the twenty fifth, used in the thirtieth, and paid out to somebody who has not been born yet. A household is entitled to ask who will still be answering the telephone. A firm built to be sold answers that question differently from one built to be handed on, and the answer shows up in what gets recommended long before it shows up anywhere else.

How this practice is paid, and why that is on this page

CWCC is paid commission by the insurance company when a policy is issued and put in force. The client is not billed for the discovery meeting, the suitability record, the design meeting or the application. Nothing is charged at any of those steps.

That arrangement creates a financial interest in recommending the contracts CWCC distributes, and it is a conflict whether or not anybody names it. So it is named here, on the mission page, rather than in small type at the bottom of a page nobody reaches. The full description of how commissions are structured, and the specific measures we use to keep them from steering advice, is set out on the transparency and compensation page.

You are under no obligation to buy anything from us, and we encourage anyone considering a contract to seek independent professional advice before committing.

What this looks like in an ordinary year

Nothing about it is dramatic, which is the point. A household that has done this work for some years replaces a vehicle without an application. It carries a renovation, or a child’s tuition, or a slow quarter in the business, out of a structure it already owns, on terms written down years earlier. An owner buys equipment in a bad month because the capital was available in a bad month.

The estate side is quieter still. A family that holds a contract paying a benefit at death is a family that does not have to sell something under time pressure in order to pay something, which is the situation that does most of the damage in the year after a death.

None of that is a promise about any particular household, and results depend entirely on the contract, the design and the discipline behind it. It is a description of what the structure is for.

The first step, and what it costs

Thirty minutes, online, at no charge. No illustration is prepared in advance, because an illustration prepared before the conversation is a proposal pretending to be a diagnosis.

We ask what you are trying to protect or build, what you have already tried, and what your situation actually looks like. At the end of it we tell you whether this fits. If it does not, you will hear that in the meeting, not in a follow up that never arrives.

Frequently asked questions