Evidence of meeting #4 for Status of Women in the 43rd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was care.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Marcie Hawranik  Founder and President, Canadian Equality Consulting
Megan Walker  Executive Director, London Abused Women's Centre
Ann Decter  Director, Community Initiatives, Canadian Women's Foundation
Morna Ballantyne  Executive Director, Child Care Now
Hélène Cornellier  Coordinator of Action Plan and Communications, Association féminine d'éducation et d'action sociale
Sara Wolfe  Director, Indigenous Innovation Initiatives, Grand Challenges Canada
Vicki Saunders  Founder, SheEO
Kaitlin Geiger-Bardswich  Communications and Development Manager, Women's Shelters Canada
Lorraine Whitman  President, Native Women's Association of Canada
Jill Earthy  Interim Chief Executive Officer, Women's Enterprise Centre
Linda Gavsie  Senior Vice President, Universal Learning Institute
Anita Khanna  National Director, Public Policy and Government Relations, United Way Centraide Canada
Rhonda Barnet  President and Chief Operating Officer, Avit Manufacturing
Armine Yalnizyan  Economist and Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers, As an Individual

5:05 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Excellent. Thank you very much.

We'll now move to Lindsay for five minutes.

5:05 p.m.

NDP

Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON

Thank you.

Ms. Whitman, I too was incredibly disappointed in the delayed response to the MMIWG report. I think action now on the 231 calls for justice is really key. Recently, the Native Women's Association published a report card on the government's follow-up to the final report. In that report card, you gave a failing grade to the government's response, including delivering on the right to culture, right to health, right to security and right to justice. Could you please elaborate for this committee on the specifics of that report card?

5:05 p.m.

President, Native Women's Association of Canada

Lorraine Whitman

First of all, there is the cultural component as we defend and represent our first nation, Métis and Inuit women, making sure the cultural component is there so that they're in a comfort zone where they're able to get the help. That's with the shelters as well. There are only a few indigenous shelters across Canada. Many of our women will not go to a non-indigenous shelter. The people there don't know their culture or their history, so they would not attempt to go there. The shelters are certainly well endowed to be able to help the women, but there's no cultural component for the indigenous.

With the health component, we're noticing more of the violence. We're noticing more with the mental health. With COVID we've noticed more of an increase because of the violence. People are isolated. They're in the same home as the perpetrator, the abuser. They're also unable to get the help they need because the offices are closed down, or they may be from outside the community. There are a lot of gaps. Even though there have been dollars for off reserve, some of those dollars haven't gone to the indigenous women and their children.

With regard to security, we just noticed, a day after the national inquiry, Chantel Moore in New Brunswick being shot by a police officer five times. When it comes to security, I think there could have been a better way. We can always say “if this" or “if that”, but I do know that if they'd had the means to track or have a record of elders in the community, of different knowledge-keepers, they could have called upon them to help the indigenous lady. They may have been able to de-escalate some of the events. So if we are able to have that in the line of security....

With regard to justice, we're seeing more of our women, our marginalized group of men and women, who are in prisons and shouldn't be there. With COVID, in order for them to be able to be protected, they were going into a cell that was for those who'd done something bad, but they hadn't done anything bad. It was for their protection, when in fact it wasn't. Again, it demoralized women because of the situation they were in. We were supposed to be there to protect the women, but we were putting them in isolation cells. Those are the parts with regard to justice.

So no, we haven't seen many improvements. We're working on them. I'm hoping that with partnerships continuing we will be able to meet the needs of vulnerable women, girls and our gender-diverse communities, which again helps our communities as a whole.

Wela'lin for the question. Thank you.

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

You have 45 more seconds, Lindsay.

5:10 p.m.

NDP

Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON

Okay.

I think we're seeing a movement into a lot of the black lives matter and against anti-black racism and anti-indigenous racism and violence. We're seeing a movement toward more of the mental health focus, housing supports, and that sort of thing. I'm wondering if you could talk briefly about that movement away from a focus on hard-core policing, or recognizing that there is systemic racism within our police forces, and how that impacts the indigenous community and women as well.

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Ms. Whitman, before you get started—

5:10 p.m.

NDP

Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON

Super fast.

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

You need to be super fast. We have about 20 seconds, because that was a 45-second question.

5:10 p.m.

President, Native Women's Association of Canada

Lorraine Whitman

Do you still want me to answer that? Okay.

Yes, [Technical difficulty—Editor] racism and discrimination, we're noticing that. I have spoken to Commissioner Lucki. We are working together and hoping that there will be some changes. We have given her recommendations.

We also gave it to the media, and that is to be able to have a camera on the police officers so that in an investigation that occurs we then know from the footage that there are no gaps or guessing at pieces of the puzzle.

Again, there's the cultural component, which is that we would have an elder who would be available or a database that they would be able to use in the area of the situation with people with mental health...as well as stop to kill, you know, shoot to kill, so we are working—

5:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Thank you so much. I know that was such an important answer.

On behalf of the committee, I would really like to thank Lorraine, Jill and Linda for coming today, providing us their briefings and answering our questions.

We are going to suspend for a couple of minutes to let the next panel turn over, and we'll reconvene very shortly.

5:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

We're going to reconvene. This is our final hour of witnesses we're going to hear from today.

Today on this study we have Anita Khanna, who is the national director of public policy and government relations for the United Way; Rhonda Barnet, president and COO of Avit Manufacturing and chair of the advanced manufacturing economic strategy table; and Armine Yalnizyan, economist and Atkinson fellow on the future of workers.

I welcome all of you.

We're going to turn it over to Anita for 10 minutes.

5:20 p.m.

Anita Khanna National Director, Public Policy and Government Relations, United Way Centraide Canada

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.

5:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Excellent. Thank you very much, Anita.

We're now going to move over to Rhonda Barnet.

You have the floor for 10 minutes.

5:35 p.m.

Rhonda Barnet President and Chief Operating Officer, Avit Manufacturing

Thank you. I have been on this computer on Zoom and Teams all day with the government. Again, I'm Rhonda Barnet, president and COO of Avit Manufacturing in Peterborough.

I was the first female chair in Canada's history of Canada's largest trade association, Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters, from 2016 through to 2018. With the full support of the sector and the national board, I started women in manufacturing, which is what I want to talk to you about today.

I've been selected to be one of the nine Canadians working with Monique Leroux on the industry strategy council to help government. It's an industry-led strategy to advise government on nine critical sectors to grow the economy. I've been on that meeting all day today with three ministers, constantly carrying the torch of gender equality and building a gender-balanced economy and recovery as we go into the next phase.

I want to talk to you a little bit about the background of what brought women in manufacturing forward, what the federal government has done, the difference we made, and then the problems that COVID has caused, the recovery and how we build out that gender-balanced recovery. Manufacturing is a sector where the wage gap between men and women is very negligible, especially in entry-level jobs, and we're working very hard to shift to that. There's a real opportunity to engage more women in this sector and elevate them in the economy.

I would like to give you a bit of background. Manufacturing is one of the three engines of the Canadian economy: manufacturing, mining and agriculture. We need to make things, grow things and develop things, and add value to them to make money. We build a service economy on that. It's a very important sector in the Canadian economy. We represent 10% of employment, which is about 1.8 million jobs, as well as 10% of GDP, which is $620 billion in Canada. For every direct job in manufacturing, up to three other jobs are created in the economy.

We have a great opportunity as we recover to build out this sector, engage more women and have a more gender-balanced economy. Manufacturing is vitally important to the economy. Women are vitally important to the success of the sector.

Historically, employment numbers in manufacturing for women were grossly under-represented. The last 30 years the dial hasn't changed. Of the gross number of jobs, out of the 1.8 million jobs, we are looking at about 460,000 jobs that women held in the sector.

When I came on in 2016, we wanted to make a difference.

We worked together with Minister Monsef and Women and Gender Equality to set up a program and move the dial. We needed the talent to grow our sector. Women were grossly under-represented. We put in a bunch of programs. You can look at our website, womeninmanufacturing.ca. It's world class. I travel the world talking about what we're doing in Canada. A lot of countries are starting to learn from us.

We set these programs together. We received a grant of almost half a million dollars over three years to put the program in place. We have things like free diversity tool kits that apply to male-dominated industries. There are some great tools there; please go and see those. There are tons of tools and programming.

A year and a half through the program, we were really making a difference. We call this program “We can do it”; it's a modern-day Rosie the Riveter. Our goal was to add 100,000 net new jobs for women in our sector over five years. In one and a half years, we added almost 55,000 net new jobs for women in the sector, as of February from Statistics Canada. We didn't even get a chance to celebrate that. We passed our halfway mark in just a year and half. The share of jobs held by women increased from 28% to 29.6% of the total jobs in manufacturing. It was a huge win for the sector, for women and for Canada. Then March happened and COVID happened.

I want to talk to you about that. I want to talk to you about the she-session. I was urged today on the council to give some strong data points. Today I am here to give you the data, to let you know just how bad it is and how much work we need to do to double down. We have the tools. We have the government, policies and people to engage women in the economy. We have to double down and do more of that because of what happened.

In April, manufacturing lost just over 300,000 jobs compared with February. Women were 29% of the labour force, but they lost 38% of the jobs, whereas men, who had held 70% of the jobs, lost 62% of the jobs. Job losses for women were negatively disproportionate to their share of jobs in the sector. Even more concerning than that, the sector is rallying, which is good. There's recovery. There's rehiring going on. In May the sector recovered 79,100 jobs. The June data will be released, I think, this Friday. Both men and women saw some partial rebounding, obviously, through these numbers, but men were called back in much greater numbers.

I had our statistician do a deep dive on this because I wanted to share some of this with you. Women earned only 15% of the recovered jobs in the sector. We lost more jobs and we're recovering less. The gap is widening. It's a serious problem. Men recovered 85% of the jobs. When we looked at it—I'm going to break it down for you—it was men who had children who were over the age of 18. It was even men outside of the sector who got brought back in. Your points around child care are well taken, and I have some other thoughts on that.

My hypothesis to this problem that I want to share with you today is that women have seen greater job losses and fewer recovered jobs, possibly on a voluntary basis. In our sector, women might have put their hands up because they had to out of a direct need to care for children and aging parents. I'm sure that's something you've been talking about all day.

To verify this, I looked at the multi-use microdata files, PUMF, and across tabulated age of youngest child in the home and the sex of the worker—so looking at the gender of the worker and the youngest kid in the homes—just to see what impact child care did have. As expected, women in households whose youngest child was less than six years old or between six and 12 years old, which were the categories, suffered the biggest job losses, 33,000 job losses. Men in households with the youngest child less than six also saw significant job losses, 18,000 job losses. In fact, both men and women with young school-age or preschool children have suffered a lot of layoffs in our sector.

What we've heard is that many parents, especially women, were hanging on by a thread to maintain employment and care for their children. It's been a very serious issue. We're predominantly production workers. We do have other avenues where people can work from home or work part shifts, etc., but there's a very serious issue here.

Again, the interesting statistic is that men in households whose youngest child was between 18 and 24 years old have seen their employment rise over the pandemic by 13%. That category actually had increases, not decreases, in job levels in our sector. That means that, when the sector went back to the labour market to add capacity in May, net new jobs were awarded to men, basically, with adult children, which is not a surprise. We needed labour. Those are the people who could be recalled, maybe, from disrupted sectors.

The data does suggest that caring for children is a serious factor to consider as we look at plans to rebuild the economy through growth in jobs, especially. I'm talking specifically in my own sector, in manufacturing.

What are the next steps and recommendations from my seat? Manufacturing is absolutely a growth opportunity for the economy. We were already set in a plan to double the output of manufacturing, and we were desperate to find workers. We're going to get back there, and we want to double down and work with the CME women in manufacturing programs. They were working. We had moved the dial. It was so exciting. We gained 55,000 jobs, but we lost 100,000 jobs overnight, so we're way behind.

Now we have to double down and really re-engage women back into the economy. We need to ensure that we engage women in all sectors and in our sector to prepandemic levels. That's a very serious issue.

5:45 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Rhonda, we're just coming to the end of your remarks. Please take about 10 seconds to give us your final comment, so that we can move to our next witness. Thank you.

5:45 p.m.

President and Chief Operating Officer, Avit Manufacturing

Rhonda Barnet

Sure.

One of my suggestions would be to leverage.... Child care's a big problem. What about programs like work sharing or expanded CEWS? We need to give women tools to be engaged partially in the economy and maintain adherence to an employer, so that we can get them through this part, where child care and the access to education is so uncertain.

I'm thinking, in light of not having the time to deal with child care just yet, we need other levers to get women partially back to work.

5:45 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Excellent. Thank you so much, Rhonda.

We're going to move on to our final witness of the day. Armine is an economist and the Atkinson fellow on the future of workers.

You have the floor for 10 minutes, Armine.

5:45 p.m.

Armine Yalnizyan Economist and Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers, As an Individual

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you to everybody who has been spending all day listening to witnesses.

I know it's hot and I know it's the middle of the summer, and I know that we're all really struggling. I thank you very much for your time and the invitation to bear witness to this august committee. I hope you can change the world because we need you to do that.

A month ago, the Bank of Canada told us that the worst could soon be over for the economy—great news. Of course, the pace of rebound and getting back to so-called normal is far from certain. For Canadian workers, recovery just can't come soon enough, as both Anita and Rhonda have said.

In April's labour force survey, StatsCan said that more than a third—36.7%—of the potential labour force did not work or worked less than half of their usual hours. May, a month ago, showed that we had more of a “he-covery” than a “she-covery”, that is, more men returning to work than women. On Friday, when the next labour force stats come out, let us hope that the stories we are all hearing don't translate to more women simply giving up and dropping out of the labour force because they just can't juggle everything and do child care and home-schooling too.

The trends are deeply problematic for households and for the potential of the economy. This isn't a feminist issue. This is a macroeconomic issue. That's because household spending accounted for over 56% of GDP before the pandemic struck. It's been a growing driver of GDP for some time because we've been exporting less and businesses have been investing less, which leaves only the household sector and government actions to continue to help GDP grow.

Household purchasing power propels the Canadian economy, and women's incomes are critical to maintaining household purchasing power. Women have been asked to pull more weight over the last few decades. By around a decade ago, we made up half the employed workforce. Women's incomes are really critical to maintaining household purchasing power, but we have a lot of women who were deemed non-essential during the shutdown, the majority of whom were women who are going to find their way back to being rehired blocked because the limiting factor for women's return to work is child care. Mathematically speaking, it is simply impossible for us to get to recovery, to regain GDP or the number of jobs, without women coming back fully able to return to work.

Simply put—sing it with me now, because this is the smash summer hit of 2020—there will be no recovery without a she-covery and no she-covery without child care. Let me be really clear. If we don't do this, we are actually voting to move towards economic depression—and not a recession but a prolonged contraction of GDP—by policy design. You can't turn around to your colleagues in any of your parties and say that you didn't know, because I've just told you, and there is no way, mathematically, that it can happen differently.

On the acceleration of shovel-ready infrastructure, sure, that will help speed recovery. That's fantastic, but mathematically you cannot get growth in primarily male-dominated jobs to offset the number of jobs lost by women. Furthermore, you can repair all the critical physical infrastructure you want, but if you're just standing by and doing nothing about the loss of critical social infrastructure, you are not doing your job, and that is exactly what we are poised to do.

User fees for child care represent the second-biggest cost for young families, second only to housing expenditures. Many families who lost their incomes forfeited their spots in child care facilities because of the high cost for simply holding onto something that they weren't using. Child care costs will undoubtedly also rise because of the new requirements for physical distancing, dramatically increasing staff-to-child ratios and adding new fixed costs for space, PPE and cleaning.

We don't know what share of our ecosystem of child care, which in Canada is operated through the public system and through the private not-for-profit and private for-profit providers, is going to shutter in the wake of the pandemic, because we don't measure it. In the United States, they've estimated that half of their ecosystem of child care is at risk. In other words, four and a half million spaces out of nine million spaces are about to shutter. It would cost $9.6 billion every month just to hang on to the capacity they have. Also, of course, the fewer the spaces, the less the ability for women to return to work even when they have a job.

The irony, my friends, is that subsidized child care literally pays for itself. A study by noted Quebec economist Pierre Fortin showed, in 2008, that for each $100 of day care subsidy paid out by the Quebec government, the Quebec government generated a return of $104 for itself and a windfall of $43 for the federal government, which didn't put in one thin dime. It literally paid for itself.

Child care can indeed play a threefold role in recovery. Beyond simply facilitating women's return to work and indeed being a source of employment, the decision to ensure that child care is affordable and that high-quality early learning is accessible to all families is going to maximize the future of the next generation of Canadian children, who in turn will be asked to lift up people too old, too young and too sick to work. That would lower public spending and increase revenues for governments and society. It pays for itself in the short term and in the long term.

We may choose not to act, as the federal government—or not—but we will reap what we sow. The U.S. data provocatively shows the return on investment on spending on child care. Subsidized, high-quality early learning education for kids who are at risk returns between four dollars and $8.75 on each dollar invested in that type of child care. It's not a warehouse to make sure mommy can go to work, but a system that is targeted to neighbourhoods where kids are more at risk of entering school not learning ready and of not being supported when they are in school to continue to learn.

The impact also doesn't end with preschoolers. Canadian data, our own evaluation, shows that spending on pathways to education, which has been supported by both Liberal and Conservative governments but never made the norm, has resulted in a net benefit of over $2,000 for governments over and above what they spent per student in the program, and almost $5,500 for individual students. It's a winner.

Why aren't we doing this? What is the resistance to this? We are literally leaving money on the table by not using the opportunity that we have right now to improve our social infrastructure. By rolling out accelerated initiatives in our biggest cities first, which have the biggest concentrations of children and the highest concentrations of poverty, we could maximize our collective potential and our individual potential.

Across society and per person, we could improve our future by investing in child care. Getting everyone learning ready and learning supported as they age has to be a 21st-century requirement because the population is aging. As a shrinking working-age cohort is asked to do more for growing numbers of people who are too old, too young and too sick to work, we can't afford to discount the skills development of anybody. This means the supply of high-quality early learning child care should not be left to market forces to decide what is our choice, but rather integrated with the public education system because it is a public good that is undersupplied by markets chronically.

I believe that, given the circumstances, this requires a national approach and a federal role—and I get that it's controversial. Why would you put the feds in charge of child care or having any role in child care when it falls, constitutionally, into the provincial jurisdiction?

I have an answer for you. It's because child care is more costly to operate safely in the post-pandemic world, because provinces and cities are cash-strapped, because the federal government provides funding also for health care and post-secondary education and runs EI, and because even if we don't raise taxes to pay for it immediately due to the post-pandemic fiscal pressures, debt by the federal government is the least risky and the lowest cost of any debt held by any economic agent in society: households, businesses, municipalities and provincial governments. We would be crazy not to do this, even if it required borrowing to do it.

I would be remiss not to mention the number of recent immigrants and migrant workers who have been made sicker and even died because of the pandemic and inadequate provisions for safe reopening. We need—

5:55 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Armine, we have only about 20 seconds left for your comments.

5:55 p.m.

Economist and Atkinson Fellow on the Future of Workers, As an Individual

Armine Yalnizyan

Okay. Thank you.

I will say, in closing, the pandemic has revealed that the caring economy—health care, elder care, child care—is a vital underpinning to the essential economy. You need a plan. If you had 25% or half of your roads and bridges at risk of collapse, this government would have a plan to fix that. What's the plan for child care? We know that this is as critical for infrastructure as it is for anything else, and it is an economic imperative, not a feminist imperative.

Thank you very much for your time and your consideration. I look forward to our conversation.

5:55 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Excellent. Thank you so much.

We're going to start off our rounds of questioning with five minutes each. We're going to start off with Raquel.

Raquel, you have the floor for five.

5:55 p.m.

Conservative

Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB

Thank you, Chair. I just want to say thank you for doing such an amazing job today. It was a long haul for everyone.

I have a few questions for Anita from United Way, specifically in the Manitoba context.

Anita, I'm a member of Parliament from Manitoba. I believe the United Way serves over 5,000 communities, with 88 offices. How many employees in total do you have? How many in Manitoba, specifically?

5:55 p.m.

National Director, Public Policy and Government Relations, United Way Centraide Canada

Anita Khanna

Thank you for the question.

We serve over 5,000 communities. We fund over 3,400 community organizations and 5,600 vital community programs. We have 79 members, just to be clear on that as well, not 88.

In terms of the specifics around the number of employees, I'm sorry. I don't have that figure in front of me. I'm happy to follow up with you.

5:55 p.m.

Conservative

Raquel Dancho Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB

That would be great. I would really appreciate that. I've been to the Winnipeg office. It's a lovely office. The people there are just phenomenal.

In a former life I got to take a tour. I greatly appreciate the work that your organization does in Manitoba.

I want to ask you about the government's Canada emergency community support fund, the $350 million in total given to several different large-scale charitable organizations in Canada. How much funding in total did United Way Canada receive from this fund?

5:55 p.m.

National Director, Public Policy and Government Relations, United Way Centraide Canada

Anita Khanna

Thank you for that question as well. I'll say that it's one that I anticipated.

Given that we're holding a contribution agreement with the federal government, it is actually theirs to disclose in terms of the figure of distribution. I'm not able to disclose that figure.