Ted Barris

Some months ago, I met a friend by accident. We stopped, distanced, masked and got caught up. We talked about vaccination, isolation and the state of the nation, all in one meeting. I was surprised, however, when the subject of the CERB (the Canada Emergency Response Benefit) came up, that my friend thought federal spending of that magnitude ran the real risk that everyday citizens would abuse it.

“There’s too much cheating,” my friend said. “Too much money squandered.”

I acknowledged that, yes, there were Canadians who’ve fraudulently applied for, received and spent money they weren’t entitled to. I didn’t know it at the time, but when I checked later I discovered that Karen Hogan, Canada’s auditor general revealed (in March 2021) that as many as 30,000 fraudulent payments had gone out the door.

The loss was in the tens of millions of dollars. But during that conversation with my friend, I raised what I thought was an even more menacing statistic.

“Did you know that nearly half a million women in Canada have lost their jobs because of the pandemic?” I’d read a Royal Bank of Canada report from late winter.

The RBC report went on to say 200,000 women in Canada had now become long-term unemployed; another 100,000 (over the age of 20) had left the workforce permanently.

I pointed out to my friend that, for a variety of reasons, the pandemic had driven both my daughters from their chosen and productive careers. Each found herself attending three children – sometimes at school, mostly not – and each found it desperately difficult to manage everybody’s equilibrium, including her own.

In the same month of the RBC report, the federal government launched a task force to study women in the economy. Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and Associate Minister of Finance Mona Fortier are its co-chairs. At the outset, the task force noted that during the first year of the pandemic, 80,000 women left the workforce, as compared to 25,000 men.

Additionally, its panel of experts has recognized because women more often work in retail, tourism and hospitality, that the vulnerability of those work sectors to the pandemic has led to greater job loss among women. And because balancing work and parenting – during COVID – has fallen mostly to women, they’ve been disproportionately affected… disproportionately thrown out of work and out of sight.

Economist Armine Yalnizyan probably states the case for childcare best: “There will be no recovery without a she-covery, and no she-covery without childcare.”

So, as of Monday, the nation faces a general election. And some of those in the same boat as my friend are already decrying the expenditure of public funds to underwrite a campaign after only two years since the last election.

But I believe it’s necessary, if only to help as many of those half a million women find meaningful work or to right their upside-down careers. We’ve learned in this first week of the election campaign, that the first step on that road back is childcare.

In other words, Canada needs to free the principal homemakers of that 24/7 occupation to allow them to work to support their families away from home, cultivate their chosen occupations, and in turn grow the national economy like everybody else.

Erin O’Toole, the Conservative leader, believes that Canadian families themselves should be given the choice for where and how their children are cared for. He’d replace the current childcare expense tax deduction, with a tax credit; that credit would cover as much as three-quarters of a family’s child-care costs – or approximately $6,000 for families earning less than $150,000.

Justin Trudeau, the Liberal leader, had previously announced his party would spent $30 billion over the next five years to cut child-care costs to an average of $10 a day across the country; and as of today, six provinces have agreed to partner with Ottawa (Ontario and Alberta have not, while Manitoba is considering, and Quebec already has its own).

For the record, the NDP (particularly during this minority government) has called on the prime minister to allocate $20 billion to make universal childcare a reality.

“Parents can’t go back to work until they have a safe place to send their kids,” says Jagmeet Singh, leader of the NDP. “Since women make up about half of Canada’s workforce, economic recovery is mathematically impossible without women going back to work.”

Judge for yourself which party’s plan makes the most sense. But before you vote, look at the mothers, wives, sisters and daughters in your life. If you want their futures to be truly of their own choosing, consider childcare as perhaps a woman’s most vital step to success, rewarding work and citizen fulfillment. I know I will.