Canada’s first female finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, has tabled her first fiscal update, delivered in unprecedented times.
I’m trying to imagine all of the men – 39 of them – who preceded Minister Freeland.
I’m trying to imagine whether they’d be announcing billions of dollars’ worth of investments in things like COVID-19 contact tracing, a major vaccination rollout plan, personal protective equipment, sick leave, safer school conditions, long-term care, child care, wage subsidies, and more.
It’s not for the faint of heart, taking on the job of finance minister in the middle of a global pandemic. COVID-19 has upended our lives and you can see the fallout in Freeland’s fiscal update, which she called a feminist agenda – something I’m also trying to imagine the previous finance ministers declaring.
The plan is focused on getting Canada through a challenging COVID-19 winter. The investments are significant. They will save lives. They are a necessary minimum.
The fiscal update also plants seeds of hope, laying out a three-year $70-$100 billion stimulus package. This represents an investment of 3-4 per cent of GDP, clearly indicating that the federal government is prepared to stickhandle a public-led recovery once a vaccination program has been established.
But we will need federal leadership to extend far beyond this moment of crisis.
Part of that stimulus plan appears to include, at long last, the roll out of a national child care plan, starting with the creation of a child care secretariat. The federal government and provinces will have to work with great speed to avoid the collapse of Canada’s child care system in the face of COVID-19.
It is but one example of the toll that years of neoliberal governments have taken on the public capacity to provide what should be a basic right in a country as wealthy as Canada. Instead of creating a universal, affordable, public child care program years ago, governments played the politics of tax credits.
It took a global pandemic to move Canada into the modern era, recognizing that child care is critical to economic recovery post-COVID. Women can’t return to the workforce without it.
Similarly, it took a global pandemic to move Canada to consider a national long-term care framework, to promise a new disability benefit and to improve Employment Insurance income supports. Instead of investing in long-term care and home care years ago – knowing a tsunami of ageing baby boomers requires a systems change to advance better continuity of care – governments played the politics of austerity.
All these things should have been government priorities – federal and provincial – long ago. COVID-19 caught governments flatfooted, even though the experts repeatedly warned that a pandemic was a question of when not if.
But a broader vision to address other long-term and pressing challenges of our time –income inequality, climate emergencies, and future pandemics – is equally necessary.
COVID-19 can’t be the excuse to delay critically needed investments to address these challenges once we’re on the other side of this pandemic.
As Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, has said: structural change is necessary.
That will require sustained and larger investments than we’re accustomed to. We’ve reached the point of no return.
To that end, Freeland’s economic update has signalled tax reform, which includes addressing “the rise in extreme wealth inequality.” It’s not unreasonable for a government to turn to the wealthiest among us – particularly those who have profited from this pandemic – to contribute to the recovery effort.
A section in the fiscal update entitled Lessons Learned from the Great Recession points out that premature withdrawal of federal fiscal support would do more harm than good as those most affected by COVID-19 try to pick up the pieces.
People have lost lost loved ones. Working moms have been sidelined because they can’t find child care. Young people are facing employment barriers and post-secondary debt. And racialized people and those who had no quarantine privilege have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19, both in terms of viral transmission and their inability to safely work from home.
Post-COVID, governments need to address the health inequities that have been exposed by this pandemic, too.
These investments in public supports and programs will pay off in the long run, by addressing the determinants of health.
This was a fiscal update for hard times. The finance minister didn’t look away from the problems that have beset us. And still, much more heavy lifting will be required to set Canada on a sustainable path.
Trish Hennessy is director of www.thinkupstream.ca, a project of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
