Thank you, Madam Chair.
Good morning, members of the committee.
My name is Loriane Estienne. I am the Executive Director of Proche aidance Québec, a provincial network of around 150 community organizations that support more than 49,000 family caregivers across Quebec. With over 25 years of experience, our network's mission is to provide dignified support to people caring for a family member with a disability.
I would like to thank the committee for inviting us to contribute to this important study. We are here today because family caregiving is at the heart of this study, not only as a risk factor that is too often overlooked, but also as an essential yet fragile protective mechanism.
I'll start with a fundamental distinction. In Quebec, the 2020 Act to recognize and support caregivers provides a broad and inclusive definition.
Thus, a family caregiver is any person who provides significant support—without being a paid professional—to a member of his or her immediate circle, whether due to aging, illness, disability, or social hardship.
At the federal level, recognition remains primarily tied to access to benefits, which often involve cumbersome and complex procedures for family caregivers and are subject to more restrictive eligibility criteria. This discrepancy creates significant blind spots, namely the lack of broader recognition of family caregiving as a reality in its own right and an essential social role. Access to federal programs remains limited to specific situations, leaving out a significant portion of people who nevertheless fulfill this role.
Caregiving takes many forms, which are still insufficiently accounted for in the design of current programs. First, caregiving may lead to financial vulnerability. [Technical difficulty—Editor] and we wanted to highlight a less visible aspect. For many family caregivers, these [Technical difficulty—Editor] make it hard to fulfill their role. Family caregiving is often seen as an act of love, and it is.