Thank you so much, MP Zahid, particularly for your leadership as chair of the immigration and citizenship committee. That work is so important to our government and to our country's economic prosperity, and we appreciate having you at the table.
In terms of the measures that have been implemented, there are the CERB, the wage subsidy, the CEBA loans, the women entrepreneurship fund, the changes in EI that have actually brought the number of women receiving EI close to 50% for the first time ever, the GBV funds that we were discussing, the supports given to increase pay for those on the front lines of the fight against the pandemic, and vaccines. My goodness, there are four vaccines now, and those vaccines are going to help women who are caring for and afraid for their loved ones and help them to get back to work. That is in addition to the $1.5 billion that Minister Qualtrough announced. The funds will go and already have gone to provinces and territories to support skills training for women in the hardest-hit sectors. Those are some of the measures that our government has put forward in addition to collecting disaggregated gender data. These are going to be important foundational pieces to get our economy back.
The women in the economy task force that Minister Freeland and Minister Fortier announced is made up of a group of women who bring a breadth of experiences to the decision-making table. Their voices are going to inform our government, particularly the ministers responsible in finance, to ensure that our recovery has the most practical and the most comprehensive understanding of how women are landing in the midst of the pandemic, but also how we get women back on their feet. How do we get women into those early learning and child care spaces? Women are needed there. Perhaps we can train the women who have been hit in the hospitality sector and lost their jobs to become ELCC workers. Beyond that, we need to get more women into STEM fields, in trades, in engineering, in math, and in science. Those fields are higher-wage fields, and they have significant labour shortages.
With all the ways that women have been hit hard by COVID, there are incredible opportunities ahead of us for women and for all Canadians. With a feminist government in charge that is listening to the voices of diverse women, women are going to be okay, but that requires all of us to work together and to, first and foremost, beat the virus and ensure that everyone who wants the vaccine gets it.