Thank you.
On behalf of the 10,000 members of the Canadian Federation of University Women, I thank you for this opportunity to present today. CFUW is a non-partisan, self-funded organization of graduate women and students in 113 clubs across Canada.
The federal government could, in its budget, create favourable conditions for women's sustained economic security. Today I'll speak specifically to three recommendations that can assist women and their families in these difficult economic times.
First, to address the wage gap, CFUW believes that the 2004 Pay Equity Task Force report could provide the framework for action. It recommends adopting a new stand-alone pay equity law that would cover women, workers of colour, aboriginal workers, and workers with disabilities. Ontario and Quebec provide useful models for proactive pay equity. This report has yet to be implemented by any government, and the recent inclusion of the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act in the budget implementation bill risked weakening what little recourse women currently have to address pay equity and created two standards, one for the federal workforce and one for the general workforce.
Our second recommendation is to establish a national not-for-profit child care and early learning system. Quality accessible child care and early childhood education is the foundation for lifelong learning and healthy development. Canada remains the lowest spender on early childhood education of any OECD country. Canada ranks last in international assessments of access to and quality of early childhood education and care. The Government of Canada must address and fund an accessible national not-for-profit child care system by restoring multi-year federal funding to the provinces with dedicated capital transfers. This money needs to go to community-based child care services so that the provinces and territories can build critical child care systems.
Third, improve access to employment insurance for women. CFUW supports three changes to improve women's access to employment insurance programs: a cut-off requirement of 360 hours of work across the country to enable women to qualify should they be laid off from part-time or casual work; benefits of up to 50 weeks so that fewer unemployed workers exhaust a claim; and higher weekly benefits based on the best 12 weeks of earnings before a layoff and a replacement rate of 60% of insured earnings.
In closing, I recommend that you consider all of these crucial recommendations in your budget. Thank you very much.