Thank you.
Good morning, and thank you for the invitation to appear today.
Improving women's economic security and ensuring their equal participation is not a trivial matter, as you know. These goals are central to reducing poverty for women and children; for enabling women to fully utilize their talents, education, and experience; and for maintaining and growing the Canadian economy. Moreover, these goals are central to Canada's commitment to gender equality and fairness as social and economic rights, including the commitment it made made as a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Form of Discrimination against Women.
Many of the issues that I'm going to speak to you about today are well known to you. They have been evident in a variety of reports, including those by the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action, the International Monetary Fund, and the Women's Economic Council.
I'd like to talk to you about the inequalities that stem from women's caring labour and the issues that stem from their roles in their families as the main caregivers of children, the disabled, and the elderly, and how those affect women's employment and career advancement, their health, and their financial resources.
I believe that the challenges that women face can be addressed by improved policies, more workplace flexibility, and more adequate access to child care and home care services.
What I'm presenting to you is based on research, including my own, and observations of these matters over a 40-year career that has included participation in task forces, expert panels, and planning committees.
For decades, there has been an inadequate supply of affordable, high-quality child care in Canada, especially for infants and toddlers, but also for school-age children. Despite the fact that Canada has relatively high rates of labour force participation among women, including mothers of young children, access, affordability, and quality remain serious problems, both for middle-class families and especially for those with lower incomes.
A recent OECD report found child care costs in Canada to be among the highest among 35 OECD countries. They say that Canadian families spend almost one-quarter of their income on child care, a ratio much higher than in other parts of the world. Across the OECD, while the average two-income family spends 15% of its net income on child care, in Canada the ratio is as high as 22.2%. Single parents, on average, fare much worse.
Child care costs vary widely across Canada. In 2016, average monthly fees for infant care ranged from as low as $152 in Montreal—partly or mostly because of Quebec's policies—to over $1,600 a month in Toronto. Even parents who have a subsidy can wind up with substantial out-of-pocket costs because of the way subsidies and additional fees are structured. Low-income families with a child care subsidy in Saskatoon and Calgary have out-of-pocket fees of almost $500 a month.
In addition to high costs, the lack of access to regulated child care remains a serious problem. Wait-lists are a common feature for centre-based care, with almost all the large cities having 70% of their centres reporting that they maintain a wait-list.
High child care costs and the need to provide greater access to affordable early care have been identified as critical issues since 1970. Various attempts to develop a national program have come and gone and still Canada lacks a national early childhood education and care policy.
Lack of affordable quality care may dissuade some women from employment at all, including those struggling to be self-sufficient. It may limit their access to education and training, and result in high rates of part-time and precarious employment. Moreover, it increases dependency, deprives businesses and communities of women's talents and skills, and results in less tax revenue for governments. It also results in less stimulating early childhood programs being available to promote children's development. While some women may be precluded from employment, others do work and carry on despite concerns about work-family conflict and stress.
It's not true that not having a high-quality child care program will necessarily lead to very low labour force participation rates. We're an example of the paradox. What we do have, though, is women and families who do not benefit from having a high-quality child care system.
This partly also reflects the lack of thought and action given to ensuring that there is a trained, well-remunerated child care workforce. Various studies, including one by the Child Care Human Resources Sector Council, indicate that the median wage for child care centre staff in 2012 was $16.50 an hour, and $22 an hour for program directors. Working conditions for early childhood staff have also been of some concern, including lack of access to a pension plan.
Studies have indicated that high turnover in child care programs is one of the factors we must contend with, and recruitment and retention are issues that particularly require attention if we are to grow the early childhood system. We also need to ensure that pay equity legislation addresses the issues evident in the early childhood workforce and other female-dominated workforces that have historically been underpaid.
Further concerns include maternity, parental, and compassionate care leave. I know this is an area that the government has committed itself to studying and to ensuring that there are improvements in flexibility. We have a complex system of leave and benefits, one that requires careful attention. I will say, however, that research clearly indicates that a longer period of leave with comparatively low replacement has harmful effects on women's employment, and results in lower rates of labour force participation, an increase in the likelihood of changing employers, and an increase in the maternal wage gap.