Canada

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We hope you can join the discussion: How can we ensure that everyone gets the care they need, and make sure we are also caring for the people who provide it? We are building a coalition to advocate for a universal, comprehensive, publicly funded, high quality, affordable, accessible, accountable, and non-profit childcare system in Nova Scotia. Are you a parent? A grandparent? Are you a child care provider? An early childhood educator? A concerned community member? We want to hear from you at this event. 

Hear from panelists about why you should care about the care economy, which is about people who need care and those who provide care, paid and unpaid. Much of this care work is undervalued, most of it done by women, and disproportionately immigrants, migrant workers, and racialized people. Care is also critical social infrastructure. Hear how child care itself is an economic driver and why it is critical to create a healthy society, ensuring everyone reaches their potential.

Angella MacEwen is a Senior Economist at CUPE National, and a policy fellow with the Broadbent Institute. Her primary focus is understanding the impacts of Canadian social and economic policy on workers. Angella writes a quarterly publication, Economy at Work, which aims to communicate current economic issues to a broad audience. She holds a MA in Economics from Dalhousie University.

El Jones is a two-time National Spoken Word Champion and the former Poet Laureate of Halifax. She is dedicated to using poetry in prison outreach and youth engagement, and volunteers twice a week at Centreline Studio on the corner of Uniacke and Gottingen. Her poems deal with the social-political issues that surround race and gender. For the past year, Jones has been running the Saturday Morning edition of the Halifax Examiner, bringing her razor-sharp analysis to bear on Nova Scotian politics. Her book of spoken word poetry, Live from the Afrikan Resistance! was published by Fernwood in 2014. 

Women’s workforce participation has declined over the past year but the federal government’s commitment to big investments in child care aims to reverse that trajectory. We’ve been down this road before – why is Canada-wide child care so difficult to achieve? What’s different this time? What could a system look like and how will it benefit children, parents and the economy? Join Canada Club Toronto on June 15 to hear from our panel of experts as they discuss the benefits, challenges and opportunities of Canada-wide child care and early childhood education. This panel will be hosted by the YMCA of Greater Toronto and feature an introduction from CEO, Medhat Mahdy and will be moderated by Michelle Eaton, VP of Public Affairs at the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and will include:

• Dr. Emis Akbari - Professor and Program Coordinator, the School of Early Childhood, George Brown College
• Dr. Kate Bezanson - Associate Dean of Social Sciences and Associate Professor of Sociology, Brock University
• Jean François Perrault - Senior Vice-President and Chief Economist, Scotiabank
• Armine Yalnizyan - Atkinson Foundation’s Fellow on the Future of Worker

You will receive the access link on the morning of the event.