Wonderful. Thank you.
I'd like to acknowledge that I'm speaking from the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe Nation and to thank the committee for the important opportunity to contribute to the study.
I'm Anita Khanna. I'm the national director of public policy and government relations at United Way Centraide Canada.
On behalf of the United Way Centraide network, I'd like to thank the federal government, MPs and civil servants for their critical and important work to support Canadians through this pandemic. I'd also like to recognize the service of essential workers on the front lines of this pandemic: cleaners, child care workers, migrant workers, grocery store staff, nurses, PSWs, doctors and staff in domestic violence and homelessness shelters.
The United Way Centraide network is second only to government in funding for vital community services focused on eliminating poverty and removing barriers to social inclusion for vulnerable people. Serving all regions of Canada, United Way Centraide supports over 3,400 community organizations and 5,600 programs, including direct funding of over $11 million for sexual and domestic violence services that reach 122,000 people annually.
United Way Centraide Canada and our network have been on the front lines since this pandemic broke in Canada, and our work has been multi-faceted. We are leading and supporting community action tables and making direct investments to support basic needs and life essentials, access to food and delivery for isolated families and seniors, support for homeless people and support to sustain essential front-line community services. We've also been active in providing advice to governments about the needs of community members and of the charitable sector, which so many are relying on now and will rely on in the future. We've also been brokering new partnerships and coordinating sector-wide responses, like bulk purchasing and coordination of PPE and food.
Collectively to date, our network has raised over $30 million to invest in local emergency community supports across the country. We are also very honoured to be serving as a delivery partner for critical federal investments to address urgent needs arising from COVID. We are ensuring that funding from the new horizons for seniors program and a portion of the emergency community support fund are being deployed to community agencies serving people in extremely vulnerable circumstances.
Our on-the-ground experience affirms that the pandemic has impacted women, children, seniors, black and indigenous people, people of colour, precarious workers and people with disabilities, among others who are marginalized the hardest. Women with intersecting identities—racialized, gender-diverse, disabled—and those who are mothers are more likely to be precariously employed, to earn less in the labour market or to work in risky conditions. As PSWs and grocery store workers, they are at greater risk of infection due to the lack of PPE and their travel to and from work on public transit. They also face potential exposure at work and on their way to work and the risk of bringing the infection home.
Whether a woman is managing her household, laid off or performing essential duties, she is much more likely to be working around the clock, caregiving for elders and children, and this has only been amplified with day cares and schools closed. Women's heavy labour burden also involves going into stores to purchase food, home-schooling supplies, medication and other essentials for their families, again placing them at risk of infection.
Social distancing and isolation have worsened gender-based violence. Women who are in abusive relationships are more at risk, while close living conditions, economic hardship, family stress and other pressures make women even more vulnerable in situations that could become abusive. Many women feel they have no choice but to stay in these abusive households because of the risk of staying in shelters with close quarters and exposure to infection. This has contributed to an increase in invisible homelessness in our country.
With these concerning trends, we need to ensure that COVID-19 does not move women's economic and social gains backwards. The threats to advancing gender equality, expanding workforce participation and building Canada's economy are just too great.
Our deployment of community funding across the country has highlighted that many social issues and inequalities have deepened and have become even more complex due to the pandemic. We've seen the additional vulnerability of low-income families, a high demand for food and mental health support, and consistently an increase in violence against women.
United Way Centraide has deployed funding to serve women. Through the new horizons for seniors program funding, over 930 programs received support, and 60% of those targeted women seniors.
Through the emergency community support fund, United Way Centraide has so far supported 116 programs that serve women and girls as a primary population, and another 280 that serve women and girls as secondary populations. Over $3 million has been granted to support programming targeting women and girls so far, and funding processes are still very much under way.
The federal government has implemented critical policies and programs to help Canadians keep safe. These include the CERB, funding for sexual assault and domestic violence programs, increasing funding for Reaching Home, and much more. This is work that should be commended.
We can also improve upon the programs and implement crucial additional ones that will further support women. Key elements of preparing for the potential second wave, achieving the she-covery that Armine Yalnizyan has written about, and building Canada back better demand action on a national child care program, prioritization of access to affordable housing and reduced risk of homelessness, improving access to good jobs and building more income security, as well as a stronger charitable sector that is there to serve women and provide them with good, stable jobs.
The pandemic has made it clear that our economy cannot function without child care. It is time to act on a national child care strategy that ensures affordable access to high-quality spaces. Women and their families cannot recover without investment in a reliable system of child care that compensates its majority-women workforce like the essential economic engine they truly are.
COVID-19 has also shown us that action to end homelessness and enable access to safe, affordable housing needs to be further prioritized. With high numbers of women in poverty who have mental health challenges or who are in abusive situations struggling to find and maintain housing, systemic barriers are clearly at play. We urge the federal government to take accelerated action on ending homelessness, to bolster supports for homeless women and gender-diverse people, and to appoint a federal housing advocate and council in accordance with federal right to housing legislation.
The job losses due to COVID-19 have been significantly higher for women, as the service, hospitality and retail sectors have been hardest hit and heavily challenged to recover. This will in turn hurt our economy, as women spend much of their earnings in local community. A program of good, stable jobs paying livable wages needs to be prioritized, and women need to have access to PPE in these settings as well. And of course, child care will be essential to their returning to work and bolstering our economy. This is also the case when it comes to income benefit programs that boost household incomes to ensure that no one is left behind, whether they are working or not.
It's also essential for Canada to continue its work collectively on anti-racism and building relationships with organizations of people of colour. It's a key community solution to get us through the pandemic and meet the needs of those who are most vulnerable. It's something that everyone should be doing at this time, and it is more important than ever. We have to continue the work of truth and reconciliation and confronting anti-black racism and sexism, or risk moving backwards on those fronts as well.
Finally, I'll speak about not-for-profit and charitable sector stabilization. Action here is critical, given how many women are served by and serve in our sector. They make up 75% to 80% of our workforce. As a funder of the community sector, United Way Centraide Canada knows that organizations working with women and children are under significant strain, while working to ensure they continue to offer vital services.
The pandemic has created additional cost to organizations, which have to rapidly alter their models to meet public health requirements on their own reduced capacity, especially at shelters. There is a huge concern out there around the financial viability of these organizations, given the loss of key spring and summer fundraising events like golf tournaments, galas and events that have had to be cancelled. In the context of already limited core funding for women's organizations, COVID-19 is a threat to the existence of organizations that are focused on gender equity.
There is an urgent need to ensure that the charitable and not-for-profit sector and its workforce are stabilized. Without this, the sector cannot support community members during a second wave or beyond. Stabilizing this sector and building it back better would help promote gender equality. We have a highly feminized workforce, and we need to ensure that they can stay in the workforce, especially with variations in school and child care programs across this country.
We know that many staff across organizations are stressed. They have to deliver more services in different and more costly ways to people in more need than ever before. This leads to big concerns about the mental health of their staff and teams, who are suffering vicarious trauma and exhaustion as they address the hunger, the violence and the mental health needs within their communities. Many staff are concerned about the financial viability of their organizations and how to continue their agency operations, even as they make tough choices and have layoffs.
Thank you to the committee for the opportunity to speak on this important topic. As leaders in evidence-based investments for lasting social impact, our members are deeply committed to building strong, resilient communities in collaboration with local community members, all levels of government, business and labour partners, and our individual donors though COVID-19 and beyond.