Thank you.
I am unhappy with the elimination of the long-form census. It's an important starting point in making fair laws. We had opened a window on women's rights, the sun shone in, and now we're closing it.
In prehistoric societies, men and women were sharing responsibilities: she was taking care of children and he was hunting. They were interdependent.
However, when men set up commerce with money, they stopped counting the role at home. The person cooking, cleaning, and tending the young became invisible. Tax policy said she didn't even work.
Carol Lees, Saskatoon homemaker, was handed a form by Stats Canada in the 1990s. It advised her that if she had been a housewife all her life, she should indicate that she had never worked. To her this showed the level to which we had sunk.
The state required her to deny her own worth. Her complaints, the conference she organized, united women's groups across the country. She was our Rosa Parks. Her insistence that women's work in the home be counted had resonance. It also showed that Stats Canada and the Government of Canada are works in progress and that they can see the light.
At Beijing in 1997, Canada signed the UN Platform for Action, to value unpaid work. For the first time, it would count in the long-form census.
Now that window is closing.
When I heard of the voluntary survey, I was dismayed that the unpaid labour question would no longer be compulsory. Imagine my surprise to learn that the question wouldn't be asked at all.
I am a teacher. What we are teaching in school is what we believe to be important.
We teach math and reading in school because we think they matter. What is not in the curriculum, we might conclude, does not matter. And that is what is wrong with the census plan.
To take off the unpaid work sends the message that women's unpaid work does not matter. Monday I taught grade 11 students about the Rwandan genocide. The first step: “just the facts ma'am”. I gave them the background, and we watched a movie. They will have lots of opinions and be passionate about the issues, but the school's job is to give them the factual basis on which to build their views. The first step is the facts.
Statistics Canada is all about the facts. We need them as the pillar to build our bridge on, the bridge to equality.
I arrived yesterday in Ottawa by plane.
I did not ask the pilot whether he was competent. The public is already protected by the legislation. If I am the victim of a car accident, I am confident that emergency services will be deployed.
So it's not a question of whether you should ever trust anybody; it's whom you trust, what standards you have.
Our laws protect children from predators. We require security checks for those who handle our kids or our money. We trust the codes of ethics of real doctors and engineers. And it's the same with government.
I don't tell my neighbour how much money I make, but I'll tell Revenue Canada so they can charge me an arm instead of an arm and a leg. I don't tell my prospective employer how many children I have. It's none of his business. But I tell Stats Canada so that my district will have schools and parks. I wouldn't tell the stranger at the corner how I commute to work, but I tell Stats Canada so that roads won't be congested.
Government gets a bad reputation as big brother. We're worried that if they know too much they'll harm us. But if they know too little, they might also do us harm. I am in favour of small government. It should let us live our lives. But enabling people to take care of themselves starts with recognizing how much they do of that. We need the data to empower free choice.
In a democracy, those who make the laws have to know what we want. We have to tell them. If they guess, they may guess wrong.
I believe Stats Canada can be trusted. Since 1881, workers there take an oath of secrecy. The information we give them is coded and machine scanned. They are not motivated to deal with us personally. They are only looking at us as groups, for trends. They have no agenda; they are not trying to sell us anything. They are neutral.
We may worry that information could give government too much power. But for women, information is what will empower us. The facts will show with clarity the difficulties we face.
Are women earning as much as men? If not, why not?
I think it's because of our caregiving role. Do women earn longer than men? Are they delaying retirement because they can't afford it? Are senior women in poverty because they outlive men? We need the facts.
Do women suffer more depression than men do? Do they consult doctors more? Do they have more stress from career-family dilemmas? How much is this costing the economy? Give us the facts.
Are children dropping out of school more? Is unpaid care time related to how well children turn out? How does this factor affect their health, their education? We need the facts.
Women save the state billions tending the sick and elderly outside of hospital. To maintain our homes, we are the greatest spending machines in North America. We keep the economy running. Is what we do counted? We need the facts.
For me this is not about being fair. It is not about being nice to women, giving them a little pat on the head: Oh, how cute. This is about a debt we owe women. The unpaid labour question alerted legislators that what women do unpaid is one third of the GDP. Should we sweep that information back under the rug? No. We need the question to stay. It's a promise we made internationally. It's a debt we owe.