Thank you.
Good afternoon.
In recent years, Afeas has observed that, while many associations worked to achieve recognition for invisible work, the lack of a concerted approach was undermining that effort. As a result, in early 2020, with financial support from Quebec's Secrétariat à la condition féminine, we established an inter-organizational committee for the recognition of invisible work to combine our efforts to achieve genuine social change. The timing was all the more appropriate since invisible work, both unpaid and underpaid, had been making the headlines since the coronavirus pandemic started. Confinement, school and business closings and the additional workload for parents and caregivers alike made the scope of that work obvious to all and sundry.
Together with a dozen other organizations, the names of which you will see in the brief we have submitted to you, we formed the Inter-organizational Committee for the Recognition of Invisible Work. Based on the joint definition that Ms. Courteau presented, the committee wishes to highlight the economic and social contribution of invisible work, establish a clearer understanding of the issues associated with invisible work among the public, employers, public institutions and decision-making bodies, and develop new solutions for a more balanced sharing of tasks among men and women and of responsibilities among families, governments and the private sector.
Afeas and the Inter-organizational Committee for the Recognition of Invisible Work hereby present the following recommendations, which the federal government should promptly implement, above all, to recognize invisible work and to offset the pandemic's impact on the women who bear that burden. We present them under three headings.
First, with respect to the recognition of invisible work, we ask that the government designate the first Tuesday in April, by law, as national invisible work day across Canada and encourage UN member countries to designate that same day as international invisible work day.
We hope it will then apply intersectional gender-based analysis, or GBA+, and integrate it as a cross-cutting issue in assessing labour levels and evaluating and implementing government measures to recognize invisible work. We want to deconstruct gendered stereotypes and introduce incentives for a more equitable sharing of tasks and responsibilities within households and across society.
Second, as regards the valuing and recording of invisible work, we ask that government include the economic value of unpaid invisible work in calculating gross domestic product, or GDP, every five years and add a question designed to assist in calculating unpaid work hours to the long-form questionnaire used in the census that Canada conducts every five years.
Third and last, with respect to tax, economic and social measures, we ask that the government: convert existing non-refundable income tax credits to refundable tax credits for relatives and informal caregivers and create new tax measures truly suited to their circumstances; introduce fair and equitable benefits to government pension plans, such as the Quebec pension plan and old age security, for relatives and informal caregivers to compensate them for periods of time during which they are required to withdraw from the labour market to care for their children or other family members who are sick, elderly, disabled or losing their independence; add paternity benefits to the maternity and parental benefits currently provided under the employment insurance system; amend the compassionate care, adult caregiver and child caregiver benefits provided under the employment insurance regime to make them more accessible; and establish a Canadian public network of low-cost educational childcare centres from which Quebec may opt out with compensation.
In conclusion, the unequal sharing and non-recognition of invisible work undermine de facto gender equality in Canada. Invisible work is essential to our society's proper operation, particularly in the circumstances of the current pandemic, and the government has a central role to play in ensuring that the people who perform that work, who, for the most part, are still women, enjoy better protection and support and in promoting a more equal division of those tasks within families and across society. These measures will directly contribute to greater gender equality in our society.
Thank you.