The hard truth about how much we value unpaid care

The COVID crisis is revealing much about the culture of care in our society. Neighbourhoods are coming together to form mutual aid groups, ordinary citizens are delivering food to frontline workers, and parents, neighbours, and grandparents are supporting families like never before. 

Even large organizations are coming together in unprecedented ways. About a month ago, 15 broadcasting groups led by Bell Media, CBC/Radio-Canada, Rogers Sports & Media, Groupe V Média, and Corus Entertainment joined forces to host STRONGER TOGETHER, TOUS ENSEMBLE, a 90-minute show that became the biggest multi-platform broadcast in Canadian history to support Food Banks Canada. 

By all accounts, one could say that our culture of care is stronger than ever. But what about our systems of care? 

I’ve been reflecting on this quite a bit. Over the past six weeks my grandfather has been in lockdown in India, living with my aunt and uncle, in his home. My partner’s grandmother has been in lockdown, alone, in a commercially-inclined retirement residence in Canada. These are vastly different experiences of care. One obvious difference is that my aunt and uncle taking care of my grandfather aren’t paid to do so, while my partner’s grandmother is cared for by paid professionals. We are able to video chat with my grandfather all the way in India but the internet connection is so weak at my partner’s grandmother’s retirement residence that video chat isn’t an option — and it’s only about 100 kilometres from where I live in Ottawa.

For me, this raises the question: What kind of a caring society do we want?

For wisdom, I turned to my friend and care innovator Al Etmanski. 

Al proposed and led the successful campaign to establish the Registered Disability Savings Plan (RDSP) in 2008, the world’s first savings plan for people with disabilities. Recent figures by Employment and Social Development Canada indicate that by December 31, 2017, RDSPs contained over $4.16 billion in assets, up from $830 million in 2016. Al also led the closure of institutions, segregated schools, and sheltered workshops in British Columbia and founded Canada’s first Family Support Institute.  

Again, today, Al had an answer to this care riddle. He said that while most people didn’t know much about Canada’s systems of care, this pandemic has made visible two types of care: natural care and paid care — and they are out of balance. 

This imbalance is something we inherited, according to Al, as much of Canada’s social safety net and care system are based on what the UK implemented post-World War Two. An economist, Sir William Beveridge published a seminal report (now commonly referred to as “the Beveridge report”) that laid the foundations for the UK’s welfare state. 

Commissioned the previous year by the wartime coalition government in the UK, it sought to examine how the UK should be rebuilt after World War Two and to identify the great issues faced by its people. A revolutionary idea, the report proposed that workers across the UK make a regular contribution into a pooled fund and this fund would be a safety net, covering almost every eventuality that might befall an individual through life. When employment wasn’t possible due to an injury or maternity or factory closure or retirement, a newly created Ministry of Social Security would look after people, funded by the contributions.

But Beveridge had a blind spot.

He would propose the beginnings of a societal care system that institutionalized care and in doing so, Al notes, ended up inadvertently overriding and undervaluing natural care provided for loved ones by parents, extended family, and community networks. By the time Beveridge realized this omission, the imbalance would already be baked into the care system. 

In Canada, in 2020, we are still confronted by this omission in many ways. When it comes to mothers caring for babies for example, Kathryn Marshall recently wrote about how Canada’s maternity leave program is outdated and needs to be overhauled because it is “awkwardly shoved under the umbrella of employment insurance and penalizes women who want to do any sort of paid work while on leave.” The newly created Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), by contrast, allows people to collect it while earning upto $1,000 a month. The silver lining: Pandemic responses may be showing us in small ways the changes that are possible for the long-term. 

Beveridge likely would still recognize today’s welfare state, and that’s not a good thing. It’s time to reimagine how we value care in Canada. It’s time to reinvent the social safety net. 

Vinod Rajasekaran

Publisher & CEO