I had just asked about this a couple days ago at HSBC here in Vancouver for the very same reason, we wanted to have a joint account or an account that my partner and I could both access. She had mentioned the premiere account but you have to have a min. of $1000.00 in the account at all times and I was also told that we would not both be able to deposit to it, we would only be able to deposit to the account in the country the account is in so this defeated the whole idea because if I opened in Canada and he wanted to make a deposit it would need to be a wire transfer which is also costly.
We mainly use Ria money transfers, they is over a 100 locations in Vancouver alone and they are a wee bit cheaper than western union.
However seems to me there must be a better solution, I am still looking into it so if I came across anyother ideas I will post here