The Honourable Mona Fortier
Minister of Middle Class Prosperity and Associate Minister of Financ
Thank you for the recent opportunity to discuss the urgent need for an intersectional feminist recovery program. The budget is a key element in making this a reality.
Unifor represents 315,000 members in every sector of the economy across Canada. Just under 1/3 of our membership are women. We also have a significant membership that identify as non-binary, trans and gender-diverse. We bring the lived experiences, expectations and aspirations of our members into the policy work we do across the Union.
We were pleased to see that the Task Force on Women and the Economy was finally struck and that its work has begun in earnest. Taking a whole-of-government approach to gender equality is critical to the success of any recommendations it makes.
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a tremendous amount of social and economic upheaval and has exposed the glaring economic inequalities and lack of income security millions of Canadian workers face. When we entered the pandemic, many were already marginalized and disadvantaged by our economic system and we know those were largely women, Black, Indigenous, and people of colour, queer and trans people and certainly women with disAbilities.
We support the many submissions made by the various groups in our recent meeting, including the need to address the needs of the most marginalized. The comments underscored the impact of our economic structures across the lifespan for women, non-binary and gender diverse people. There are particular and long lasting effects of income insecurity at various points for women, non-binary and diverse people – at early points in life, entering the work force, child bearing years and the impact from parenting, and of course as women age out of the workforce. Throughout that lifespan, there are additional impacts for women who face discrimination based on multiple and intersecting identities.
Our follow up letter will focus on the points that I made on income security.
We know the largest share of job losses during the pandemic has been among low-wage workers – a group we know is overwhelmingly female, highly racialized, including those who face the greatest barriers to employment such as women with disabilities. We know that low wage workers, have the fewest legal protections and the fewest resources of any kind to weather this storm. DAWN Canada’s report, released last week, also emphasized that people with disabilities experienced disproportionately high temporary and permanent job loss, at almost twice the rate of people without disabilities. This pattern is systemic, not new, but the pandemic has exacerbated the existing inequities.
For the majority of women in Canada, employment is the main source of income. Even when working, many live paycheque-to-paycheque. Some work multiple jobs or face tremendous instability in their working and personal lives. Strong employment standards and labour laws are needed to ensure that workers earn enough to maintain a decent standard of living and turn precarious jobs into stable jobs. We also know that women draw from social supports more than men do. There are few statistics on non-binary and gender diverse people but it is likely a similar situation would exist. The importance of strong social programs is very much a gender issue.
Canada’s income security programs must develop around a set of common values and guiding principles based on universality, accessibility, equity, fairness, compassion, flexibility, and simplicity.
The Employment Insurance (EI) program has been the cornerstone of Canada’s income security system since 1940. The changes through the 1990s have resulted in a drop of eligibility from 80% in 1990 to around 40% today, signalling an abandonment of the majority of people experiencing joblessness. Many workers are paying into the program and never experience the hours they need to be eligible to receive the benefits.
Economic insecurity, poverty and unemployment do not affect everyone equally. These structural deficits fall disproportionately harder on historically marginalized groups including low-wage workers, racialized and Indigenous peoples, women, youth, migrants and people with disabilities.
Unifor recommends that the federal government improve the income security system and support greater gender equality by:
- Immediately boost the minimum wage to a rate that is equivalent to 60% of the median hourly wage of full-time workers, but no less than $15. Annual increases should be indexed to the CPI or the annual average wage increase, whichever is higher. Governments’ must establish an independent ‘low-wage commission’ to research the impact of minimum wage policy on workers
- stronger employment standards and labour legislation to provide stability for workers to ensure everyone is covered; And include supports such as permanent paid sick days and better emergency leave
- Introduce permanent changes to the EI program to expand eligibility, access and benefits. A revitalized EI program must:
- Replace and lower the variable entrance requirement and eligibility threshold to a standard 360 hours across the country.
- Reintroduce federal contributions.
- Increase the income replacement rate to 75% from the current 55%.
- Eliminate all waiting periods.
- Extend the period of accruing hours for workers who have been on leaves in connection with protected grounds under human rights legislation, including pregnancy, parental or disability leave. This ensures they are not left ineligible for EI in the event of a layoff.
- Increase the duration of EI sick leave to 26 weeks and regular benefits to 50 weeks.
- Eliminate the allocation of separation payments, including the assignment of severance and termination monies to the front end of an EI claim, as well as social assistance clawbacks. These monies act as shock absorbers for workers on lay off. Workers should receive all of what is owed to them and face no penalty or claw back.
- Ensure access for migrant workers, who pay into the program, but face significant barriers accessing benefits
- Promote retirement security by introducing pension and benefit insurance in consultation with provinces and territories and by ensuring priority to pension beneficiaries in terms of secured creditor status in the event of bankruptcy.
- Make it easier for women to unionize
- Implement the Disability Inclusion Plan by centring the perspectives of people with disabilities, including those least heard: women and girls, First Nations, Inuit and Métis (FNIM) peoples, deaf and hearing impaired, those with invisible and less-understood disabilities, episodic and chronic disabilities and intellectual and neurological disabilities.
In addition to the items above, it is imperative for governments to recognize the important contributions to income security made by universal health care, universal child care, public transit and other public goods – both in the services provided and in the strong stable employment the programs could be creating.
Armine Yalnizyan recently reported that the care economy, including health and education, contributes 12.3% of GDP and 21% of all jobs in the country. That’s almost double the number of jobs of the next-biggest job-creating sectors: retail, manufacturing, construction. Our population is aging and this sector is only going to expand.
A deliberate focus on the care economy, with job and service quality at the core, will contribute to a better life and a bigger economy. In particular, developing a Canada-wide system of early learning and child care based on publicly funded and publicly managed supply of high quality, universally accessible, flexible and affordable services will bring lifelong benefits to children, child-care workers, parents and the economy. It is government’s responsibility to create the framework that ensures the better life we envision becomes a reality.
Women, racialized and Indigenous peoples, youth, migrants and people with disAbilities have been consistently marginalized by policy, programs and societal norms. That marginalization has led to poverty, insecurity, precarious work and inequality.
Governments, along with civil society, must act together to foster the political will to end poverty and continue to advance income insecurity efforts long after the acute phase of the crisis has waned. We are happy for the chance to add some thoughts on how to achieve this and look forward to continued engagement to make this vision a reality
Unifor’s Road Map for a Fair, Inclusive and Resilient Economic Recovery can be found at https://buildbackbetter.unifor.org/. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or to discuss this further.
Sincerely,
Lisa Kelly
Director, Women’s Department
Unifor