Thank you.
Let me start by recognizing and thanking the federal government, MPs, and Canada's federal civil servants, for the critical and important work you are doing to support people living in Canada through this pandemic. Thank you.
I'm proud to represent today, along with Chad, from whom you'll hear in just a moment, our 84 clubs, which together serve more than 200,000 children and youth at over 775 locations across Canada. As one of Canada's largest child- and youth-serving organizations, our early learning and child care and our before- and after-school programs help young people develop into healthy, active and engaged adults.
Over the past 100 years and during these last 13 difficult months, our clubs have been there for vulnerable children, youth and families. Today clubs are providing food for families, partnering with their local food banks. We provide safe child care and programs for children and youth, and help to share trusted information on COVID safety and vaccines with our members. We have rolled out safe and high-quality digital programs when kids can't be in clubs.
Chad and I want to focus our remarks today on four key takeaways.
First, while the emergency community support fund allowed clubs to further step forward in the early months of the pandemic to support our communities, the needs in our communities continue to outstrip our ability to fully respond. Importantly, as the demand for our programs and services rises, it means more dollars out the door, not in.
Second, while the demand for our programs and services has risen, revenue has fallen. Our revenues across the country are down some $20 million after taking into account federal and other emergency supports due to large reductions in earned incomes and philanthropy. Programs like the Canadian employment wage subsidy have been extremely important in helping charities like BGC protect staff positions in the face of declining revenues. The extension of this program to June is positive and we support broad calls for further extension as the pandemic drags on.
Lastly, frontline human service charities are still facing serious fiscal challenges that have not been addressed by government programs to date, and are severely limiting our shared capacity to deliver services to communities that have borne the brunt of COVID-19's impact. A continued response to this crisis demands more. This is why we have joined others and continue our call for a community services COVID relief fund in next week's budget. This fund would provide a temporary, 18-month operating funding program to bridge our frontline agencies to the other side of this pandemic and support a transformation fund to help community services invest in their capacity, technology, operating models and mergers in order to come out of this pandemic stronger and more resilient.
We thank you, members of this committee, for your pre-budget recommendation for bridge operating grants for essential community human services organizations. These are organizations like ours that are run by and for those who serve Black, indigenous and people of colour, and are proud members of our shared economy, one that employs, I should say, 315,000 people across Canada. BGC has supported vulnerable community members for over 100 years and done so while balancing our books. This proposed fund wouldn't make us whole but would allow us to continue to provide child care and after-school programs, run safe transitional housing programs and offer newcomer support, virtual counselling and shelters for people experiencing homelessness and women fleeing domestic violence.
With that, let me pass it to Chad.