MEDIA RELEASE: 19 April 2021 – R0047
When the federal budget is released later today, it’s expected to include something Kate Bezanson has spent the past year — and much of her career — championing: more support for childcare and women who have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first federal budget in two years will be delivered by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland later this afternoon and reports in the media say it will include a $2-billion national child-care program.
Bezanson, Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies in Brock University’s Faculty of Social Sciences is an expert in gender, social policy and political economy.
Almost exactly a year ago, in the early days of the pandemic, Bezanson said that social infrastructure — and centrally, supporting and building a child-care system — would be key to the country’s economic recovery from COVID-19.
She, along with Andrew Bevan, a former Chief of Staff to a Premier of Ontario and a federal Leader of the Opposition, as well as Sheridan College Early Childhood Education Professor Monica Lysack authored a policy report titled “From stabilization to stimulus and beyond: A roadmap to social and economic recovery,” released in April 2020. Other significant briefs have followed.
The three have become some of the country’s foremost experts on the topic, appearing before numerous government committees and doing media interviews and writing opinion columns encouraging the type of support expected to be announced today.
Bezanson said she’s hoping today’s budget is a “once-in-a-generation turning point in support of families, children and Canada’s long-term economic resilience.”
“The COVID-19 crisis made visible both the vulnerability of the care sector and its centrality to averting gender-regressive economic outcomes,” she said. “A broad, multi-sectoral consensus has emerged that building a Canada-wide affordable, accessible and quality child-care system is key to a robust, sustainable and inclusive recovery.”
Bezanson will be available to speak to the media after the budget is released Monday and will also be available Tuesday, April 20.
For more information or for assistance arranging interviews:
* Dan Dakin, Manager Communications and Media Relations, Brock University ddakin@brocku.caor 905-347-1970
– 30 –
