Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank the committee for giving us an opportunity to appear before its members today. I am speaking on behalf of the Canadian Federation of University Women, a non-profit organization with more than 100 clubs across Canada that has been working for nearly 100 years to improve the status of women in Canada and elsewhere.
Current statistics show that Canada's economic system does not work for everyone. Canada has the seventh largest pay gap among the OECD countries. Women, representing half of Canada's population, are underemployed and underpaid, and their work is undervalued. This is especially true for women with disabilities, immigrant women, indigenous women and racialized women.
To ensure economic competitiveness, Canada must implement social and economic policy that actually works for all women to ensure their economic security. Our brief contains several recommendations that align with this goal, but today I will speak to the recommendation related to early learning and child care.
We recommend that the government commit to universal child care, a publicly funded, high-quality, affordable, accessible and inclusive early learning and child care. Additionally, we recommend that the government allocate $1 billion for the next fiscal year and plan for total annual child care spending to reach 1% of GDP. The reality is that for many Canadian families, child care fees are unaffordable and child care spaces are unavailable and inaccessible. Forty-four per cent of Canadian families live in child care deserts with fewer than one licensed child care space for every three children. In addition, there are large discrepancies in services and fees from one province to another, as well as low wages for educators in this sector.
The reality is also that both funding and the policy framework around child care are inadequate. Budget 2017 designated federal spending of $7.5 billion over 11 fiscal years starting in 2017, with an average spending of $540 million in each of the first five years. This represents only half of what was promised more than 10 years ago by Paul Martin's government. At just 0.3% of the GDP, Canada's current annual spending on child care falls significantly short of the UNICEF international benchmark spending of 1% of a country's GDP.
Also, the ongoing three-year bilateral agreements established by the multilateral framework present parameters that are too broad. Federal transfers must be conditional to evidence-based practices and provincial-territorial plans, timetables and measurable targets that focus on accessibility, affordability, high quality and inclusivity. Right now, provinces can use the federal transfers for parent fee subsidies or tax credits, which does little to build public not-for-profit systems affordable for all.
We know what Canada-wide universal child care can do for women, children and our economy. We know that universal child care can have a strong, positive impact on women's economic security by increasing their ability to get a job, to pursue education and skills training, or to increase their work hours and advance their career. We know that universal child care can guarantee the best developmental outcome for children, and that higher pay for educators will result in higher quality.
We know that universal child care can have a significant impact on Canada's economic growth. The IMF recognized that if the current gap of seven percentage points between male and female labour force participation with high educational attainment were eliminated, the level of real GDP could be about 4% higher today.
We know all this because there is an abundance of research and reports accumulated throughout decades that support increased federal public spending and federal policy on child care. Women's organizations, child care advocates, and unions, and now financial organizations such as the Bank of Canada, the IMF and the OECD, all agree. Last year, this committee also recommended that the federal government fund universal child care, a recommendation that was echoed over the summer by a report of the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women.
With budget 2018 depending primarily on the mass entry of women into the workforce to generate economic growth, we really fail to understand why no additional funding was given to build universal child care. We no longer want to see these reports being disregarded, and we really hope that this committee will continue to push on this issue this year.
Thank you.