Thank you very much for that question.
What the pandemic certainly has revealed to a large extent is that women are bearing the larger burden of this. One, of course, is the responsibility of family. Despite all of their efforts, women still bear the majority of that responsibility.
More importantly, of course, what we're seeing in how the pandemic is evolving is that women still remain unemployed. As we look to reform, we need to recognize that we should really look through a gender lens at how we are going to deal with issues that specifically affect women.
One of the recommendations we have made, and I think there's a commitment of the government to do this, is to extend the EI sick benefit far more often. Women are needing that benefit, and we know that the duration of it is far too short. A critical part of the reform is to ensure that we can extend that benefit especially when they're struggling with surgeries or cancer treatment. We need to ensure that they're going to continue to have support and not lose that while they're still struggling with their recovery when they're going through a sickness. That will be one of the issues.
Women traditionally work in what we would call the service sector. Quite often they're likely to have a shorter duration of work, shorter hours. Raising the maximum will be critical to ensure that they're going to get a benefit at the end of the year. It's also a way to ensure that the employer can look at the job market to make sure they can regain the women back into the workforce and improve the conditions in which they're working.