Canadian families are emerging tentatively from the cocoon of lockdown, quarantine, home schooling, remote working, and temporary income support—and are asking what comes next. While governments responded swiftly to support workers, families, and businesses as the pandemic began to take its toll, the response also exposed the stagnant inadequacy Canada’s social infrastructure.
The critical role of school and child care to economic recovery has become glaringly evident to government and the private sector, and Canadian women are facing the unwelcome, decades-old choice of working or staying home, this time with the very real added fear for the health and safety of their families. More than ever, it is time to advance women’s equality along a path toward a universal early-learning and child care system in Canada.
Read the full discussion paper Economic Recovery: Getting it Right for Women by Janet Davis.
Janet Davis has been an advocate for universal access to child care and other important services for women and children for over four decades. Janet is a mother of two children, an Early Childhood Educator, former president of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, education policy advisor, CUPE union leader at the Toronto School Board and four-term City Councillor in Toronto.
Those with young and school-aged children are caught in an anxiety-inducing parent trap. Parents are having sleepless nights fearing for their jobs while also being worried about the health and well-being of their kids. But we argue that it shouldn’t be this way. Solving the Parent Trap is a policy series on transforming childcare and education featuring ideas from Janet Davis, Nigel Barriffe, Marit Stiles, Beyhan Fahardi, Maria Dobrinskaya and is edited by Katrina Miller and Brittany Andrew-Amofah.
Download Economic Recovery - Getting it Right for Women Report
