Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee today.
My name is Kate McInturff, and I'm the executive director of FAFIA. We're an alliance of organizations from across Canada committed to ensuring the well-being of women in Canada.
I have three things to say to you today: don't spend more, spend better; when you spend on women, you spend better; and follow the money.
So don't spend more, spend better. Canadian taxpayers want and need a budget that meets their needs now and ensures a better future. A budget that fails to meet the needs of more than one-half of the Canadian population is economically unsustainable and demonstrates a failure to carry out the duties of government to meet the basic needs of its population.
I'm not here today to make a request for an extraordinary reallocation of resources to a special interest group. Women are not a special interest. They're not a small collectivity with particular concerns. They're one-half of the Canadian population and they have precisely the same interests as the other half of the Canadian population—a secure, prosperous, sustainable, and caring future for all Canadians.
I'm not here to ask you to allocate sufficient resources in the next fiscal year to allow women to attain their basic human rights across Canada, although I would love to see that happen. I'm here today to ask that when you spend on economic stimulus, you spend in a way that reaches more than a quarter of women in Canada; that when you deliver relief and support through tax policy, you do it in a way that reaches more than a quarter of the women in Canada; and that when you cut spending, you do it in a way that disadvantages fewer women.
If you can increase women's capacity to have an economic life that is secure and sustainable, everyone wins, because when you spend on women, you spend better. Globally, the increase in female employment in the developed world has contributed more to GDP growth than the rise of the economies of China and India combined. In the private enterprise sector, major corporations, such as, for example, PricewaterhouseCoopers, have recognized that increasing gender equality increases their productivity and their competitiveness. Yet with all of the spending on physical and defence infrastructure, there has been no corresponding spending on social infrastructure, spending that would reach more than 20% of women employed in the construction industry, for example; spending that would reach teachers, nurses, and service providers.
I'll give you an example. Spending on child care and early childhood education not only has an immediate benefit for those employed in that sector—and those are predominantly women—but it has multiple economic benefits.
First, it eliminates the single, most significant impediment to women's participation in the formal economy, women who we've already invested in through training and education.
Two, it has been demonstrated to significantly increase the educational achievements of all children, and of low-income children in particular, who have access to that early childhood education, increasing the likelihood that they will complete high school, college, and university, all of which will make for a more competitive workforce in the future.
Third, research demonstrates that, at a minimum, for every dollar invested into early childhood education for all children, two dollars is returned to the public purse. And for every dollar spent on low-income children in early childhood education, eight dollars is returned. This is just one example of how spending on women has a positive impact on economic growth and increases the well-being of all Canadians.
Finally, how do you know you're spending on women and how do you know you're spending better? Follow the money. Implement the recommendations of the 2009 report of the Auditor General on gender-based analysis. The implementation of the report's recommendations as they pertain to the budget process and all other fiscal and economic policy will provide an evident space for more effective spending, spending that provides results for women as well as men.
Thank you.