Kate Bezanson, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, co-wrote a piece in The Toronto Star with Andrew Bevan, Executive Advisor to Mohamad Fakih, Chair of the Fakih Foundation, and Monica Lysack, Professor of Early Childhood Education at Sheridan College, about a national child-care system being crucial for recovery and rebuilding during the COVID-19 pandemic.

They write:

“The pandemic has made it painfully clear that child care is key to Canada’s capacity to recover and rebuild. CEOs, union leaders, business groups and others have joined parents and families in recognizing that the lack of a real child-care system is dragging Canada down.

Acknowledging this, the recent speech from the throne laid out the federal government’s objective to “make a significant, long-term, sustained investment to create a Canada-wide early learning and child-care system.

When COVID-19 hit, women were the first called (or pushed) out of the labour market, making this Canada’s first care- and service-sector led recession — what some call a ‘pink-collar recession’ or ‘she-cession.’ As provinces and territories emerged from lockdown, new child-care challenges compounded pre-existing ones, threatening to hobble economic restart and entrench gender-regressive economic outcomes.”

Continue reading the full article here.