:
I want to welcome everyone to meeting number 10 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women.
Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House Order of September 23, 2020. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. The webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entirety of the committee.
In order to have an orderly meeting, let's talk about a few rules.
Members and witnesses may speak in the official language of their choice. Interpretation services are available, and at the bottom of your screen you can choose “floor”, “English” or “French”.
Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you're on a video conference, please click on the microphone icon to unmute your mike. For those in the room, your microphone will be controlled as normal by the proceedings and verification officer.
I offer a reminder that all comments by members and witnesses should be addressed through the chair.
Now we'll go into our panel on unpaid work.
Today as witnesses we have Andrea Doucet, who is a professor and Canada research chair in gender, work and care, and from the Vanier Institute of the Family, we have Nora Spinks, who is the president and CEO.
Each of you will have five minutes to make your opening remarks and after that we'll go into our round of questions.
Andrea, we'll start with you for five minutes.
:
Thank you for inviting me to speak on this timely topic of women's unpaid work. I am speaking as the Canada research chair and project director of a new seven-year partnership grant funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. This grant is focused on policies, especially child care, parental leave and employment policies that support families' paid and unpaid work.
I am pleased to say that three of our grant partners are here today, Women and Gender Equality Canada, Statistics Canada and the Vanier Institute of the Family.
My short remarks are also informed by my 25 years of research on caregiving fathers and my methodological writing on how we measure unpaid care work.
I frame my remarks around what British feminist economist Diane Elson calls the three Rs for analyzing unpaid work: recognize, reduce and redistribute.
I will turn now to recognize. We recognize that care and the care economy underpins and makes possible the so-called real or essential economy. We recognize that our economy, in the words of my colleague Nancy Folbre, is actually taking a free ride on the care economy. Society gets a pass while women, especially mothers, take on the work and the costs of care. We recognize that care is a human, not a female, capacity. Men's involvement in care can be transformative for men, for families and for societies. We recognize the extraordinarily high socio-economic value of unpaid care work and the high economic value of investing in high-quality paid care work, including elder care and child care.
The economic benefits of investing in child care are well detailed in recent studies from the U.K. Women's Budget Group and from Jim Stanford of the Centre for Future Work. These economic benefits include, for example, direct and indirect job creation, increased tax dollars and increased GDP.
That brings me to my second point, reduce. How does one reduce unpaid work? In the global north, including Canada, a key social infrastructure to reduce women's unpaid work and to facilitate their paid work is child care. As well said in the recent throne speech, the time is now for significant, long-term, sustained investment in high-quality, affordable, accessible child care.
I will turn now to redistribute. A 2019 report by the International Labour Organization on unpaid care work analyzed time use surveys from 23 countries around the globe, including Canada. They concluded, “Across the world, without exception, women carry out three-quarters of unpaid care work, or more than 75 per cent of the total hours provided.... There is no country where women and men perform an equal share of unpaid care work.”
To redistribute unpaid work, there are at least two things to consider. First, how do we support father's involvement in unpaid work? One important argument repeatedly made by parental leave scholars, including myself, is that fathers' take-up of parental leave is a lever for gender change in paid and unpaid work. Just as the federal government is looking to the Province of Quebec for lessons on child care, we should look to Quebec for lessons on policy design that will support more fathers taking parental or paternity leave. I am happy to discuss this more in the question period.
A second point about redistributing unpaid work is how to measure it. The 1995 Beijing platform for action called upon countries to make visible and to measure unpaid work through time use studies. However, time use studies can only go so far in measuring unpaid work. They measure care and housework tasks, but they do not measure responsibilities for unpaid work. As I have argued for 25 years, it is the responsibilities for unpaid work that are extremely difficult to shift.
We need stronger methodological tools for measuring the responsibilities for unpaid work, for example, combining time use diaries with qualitative research on people's stories about how they use time and live time, or time diaries that include open-ended questions that tap into socio-cultural norms that underpin gendered responsibilities for unpaid work. We also need disaggregated data so that we can track diversity, equity and inclusion in unpaid work.
To conclude, according to the ILO, it will take around 210 years to close the gender gap in unpaid care work. The time to act is now.
Canada has been a leader on gender equality. It needs to act now on child care and parental leave. We need more and stronger data, and we need to harness that data in policy development.
Thank you.
:
Good day and thank you for the opportunity to provide testimony here today. I would like to first acknowledge our meeting on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people and pay my respects to indigenous elders past, present and emerging.
It's an honour to appear today with my fellow panellists. I'm the president and CEO of the Vanier Institute of the Family. The institute is a research and education organization dedicated to understanding the diversity of families and the complexity of family life in Canada.
We are here today to discuss the critically important role women play in our families, communities, society and economy. To understand the valuable contributions women make, we need to frame women's paid and unpaid work caring for and supporting children, youth, adults and seniors within Canada's care economy. We need to deepen our understanding of and increase our investments in the care economy.
Historically, Canada, like most countries, has focused on creating a vibrant and prosperous market economy. Historically, care was largely provided by women in private homes. Today, the systems of care have become much more complex and more diverse. COVID has highlighted the strengths and vulnerabilities in our market economy and the need for a strong dynamic care economy.
Developing a strong, adaptable and vibrant post-pandemic care economy will make it possible for the Canadian government to meet domestic and international commitments and to meet or exceed public and global expectations. Today in Canada, as in most countries, care is still provided largely by women—care to family and friends, care provided through civil society, in the non-profit and philanthropic sectors and care delivered through government services such as hospitals and health science centres.
The market economy is our traditional frame of reference. A care economy is our emerging complementary intertwined economic force. The market economy has a financial focus based on the movement of financial capital and markets in businesses. The care economy has a human focus based on the movements of human capital between homes and communities. The market economy measures success by growth and wealth. The care economy measures success by growth and health.
When you buy a wheelchair, you make a purchase in the market economy. The wheelchair is a commodity. However, the occupational therapist who measures you for optimum fit, teaches you how to use it and supports you to integrate it into your life is part of the care economy. The care economy is driven by humanity and compassion, is based on dignity and respect and is framed around equity and fairness.
In the market economy, someone sells and someone buys goods or services. Goods and services have a cash or monetary value. In the care economy, someone provides and someone receives care. Care has intrinsic value. The market economy is based on cash transactions, on competition, market share and ownership. The care economy is based on relationships, compassion, sustainability and equity.
The market economy is based on private gain, measured by gross domestic product, or GDP. The care economy is based on public good, measured by gross domestic experience, also known as the human well-being index. The two economies together are required to maximize our national potential. The two economies together are core to our social and economic well-being. They are intertwined.
The two economies impact and are impacted by families. The two economies are influenced by cultural, political and environmental factors. They are interdependent. Either of the two economies can't function effectively without the other. They are like a ladder, with the two side rails being the market economy and the care economy, and the rungs of the ladder represented by the various systems—our monetary system, health care system, child care system and justice system, just to name a few.
For people to grow, to prosper and to progress up the ladder, all components need to be present and function well together. Investments in a care economy will benefit all Canadians regardless of socio-economic status, gender, abilities, immigration status or cultural background, but those who will benefit most in those investments are women.
In conclusion, if we recognize that women's unpaid and paid labour is critical for our social and economic well-being, if we frame women's contribution as part of the care economy rather than simply a subset of the market economy, and if we focus on the importance of relationships of care within the care economy, then together we will be able to optimize women's well-being.
I look forward to our conversations today. Thank you.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair; and thank you to all of the panellists on a very important topic.
COVID-19 has served to highlight the critical intersection of family, aging and care work, especially for women. As we know, seniors are the most vulnerable and have borne the brunt of serious cases of COVID, including deaths.
Prior to hospitalization, many of these seniors were recipients of caretaker support, both formal and informal, as indicated by both of our panellists. Actually, those who have managed to avoid hospitalization are also receiving caretaker support.
My question is addressed to our second panellist.
On your website, you have a fair amount of literature discussing the impact of COVID-19 on the family. Has your organization done any research specific to informal caregiver support? If you have, what have you found? If not, is this something your organization would consider looking at in the future?
I have learned so much from both of you. As a former researcher myself, I'll say we've definitely gone to a new paradigm right now.
:
Thank you for that great question.
It has been a really important period of time for social research. We have this unexpected opportunity to deeply understand the dynamics and the interplay with families and community. A big part of that is the role that caregivers play.
When we talk about care, we talk about two distinctive groups. Often both groups represent women largely, the caregivers and what is often referred to as the informal care providers. We don't like the idea of “informal”. There's nothing informal about it. They're giving care and they give it without any recognition, without any support and without any acknowledgement in a lot of cases. They give care. Care providers provide care. They're paid. They're structured. They might be volunteers, but they are associated with some type of entity.
During COVID, going back to March, we started working with some partners to poll families week over week. Since then, we have been exploring all aspects of COVID and the impacts it has on family.
One of the most significant ones is the challenge that families face in either being locked in or locked out during lockdown with respect to senior care. I might be locked in and not have access to supplementary care. Over the summer, I was providing palliative care. I was locked in providing senior services. The care sector was locked out. They couldn't come in. The palliative care nurses stopped coming. The personal support workers stopped coming. They weren't available to me. My colleague was locked out of the long-term care facility that her mother was in. She used to go regularly. She used to attend. She used to provide supplementary supports.
The research shows that both those experiences are real and have a huge impact on our ability to participate in the paid labour force, but also in the quality of the experience that seniors have. Whether you're locked in or locked out, there are excruciating decisions that need to be made. There are circles of support that need to be in place in order for that to happen. We've seen women having to leave paid employment for periods of time, if not permanently, in order to fulfill their care responsibilities. Therefore, it is a really important thing that we need to continue to monitor as we go forward.
:
Thank you for the question.
Absolutely, to care is a human capacity. I would just make that point again. Thank you for picking up on it.
I've studied stay-at-home fathers, single fathers and LGBTQ fathers or gay father households. When men leave work to care, they face the same disadvantages as women in some ways, but one of my colleagues, R. W. Connell, argued many years ago that there is still a patriarchal dividend, so for men, even when they leave work, there is still an assumption that men are primary breadwinners, that there are still connections between men and power and public life.
They don't experience it in the same way socially, but certainly when men leave paid work to care, they do face some of the same disadvantages. Also, having studied this for over 25 years, I'd say they face different challenges, because in communities when fathers go into playgroups and these sorts of what I've called maternal-dominated spaces, it can be very challenging for them. We need to change the social norms. That's why parental leave and paternity leave have been very important to me as a scholar, because when you see men walking around with strollers, as you do in the Nordic countries, it begins to shift the idea that it's only women who can do that work, especially with young children.
I know there are cultural differences around this that we need to be really sensitive to. It means really looking at the social norms and how they are changing, but I would say, having studied men in caregiving, that when men do it, they change enormously, and it has benefits for women, for children and for families. They can do it as well as women can. There should be no difference. Sometimes it's in the eyes of the viewer that they see the difference.
:
We will indeed have other opportunities to debate the motion. I will finish reading it before asking my questions:
...(b) the devastating psychological effects on victims of sex crimes and the effects on the lives of women who appear in pornographic videos produced or distributed without their consent; (c) the legislative measures that could be taken to prevent the production or distribution of non-consensual pornography and all child pornography...
I will forward the motion to you after the meeting. Thank you very much for giving me the time to introduce this motion. I think it is an important issue.
I apologize again to the witnesses.
Since I do not have much time left, I will get right to the heart of the matter.
I was involved in the creation of the first Maison Gilles-Carle Foundation home, which provides care for caregivers. In my riding, in Granby, we also have the Maison soutien aux aidants, which does exceptional work.
It is essential to help caregivers, but I would like to know how it can be done if we do not have studies on the phenomenon. As you mentioned, it is important to measure the impact of invisible work. Questions prompting more information about invisible work may have been removed from the long form of the Statistics Canada census, and that's certainly not without consequences.
I'd like to hear what both witnesses think about this issue.
:
Madam Chair, I think the question about managing multiple responsibilities at home, work and in the community is critically important for us to understand. There are public supports and then there are workplace supports. Andrea can speak specifically about some of the leave provisions, but one of the things we've been exploring together is the concept of top-ups. We're all in this together, so if you're going to be on leave and you're going to be receiving benefits, a portion comes from the government through EI and often employers will top that up and either match or increase the amount of funds available for that employee when they are away.
That's one part. That's the predictable planned leave that we can manage in advance.
Then there are the short-term ones or the intense ones that are harder to manage and are harder to predict, but are often either the trigger or the final straw that results in somebody leaving the paid labour force. It's those unplanned, unexpected issues, like COVID, like mom breaking her hip or like a spouse having heart surgery.
Those kinds of situations you can't always predict are where we have a fairly big gap, and it's where the employee ends up bearing the brunt of that. They have to take time off, sometimes unpaid. They have to sometimes step right out of their career and take an unpaid leave or leave the workforce entirely. Often it's women and often, when it's related to elder care, it's later in their career path—not exclusively, but often—so it's a bigger financial hit, a bigger impact on their pensionable earnings and on their future earnings.
I think governments and public policy, but also employers and the labour movement, can work together to fill those gaps.
:
To build on what Nora said, as you know, there are special benefits under EI—maternity and parental, compassionate and leave to care for a disabled family member—but as Nora said, the pandemic has demonstrated that we need a broader suite of special benefits if we're thinking about public policy.
In terms of parental leave, for example in Sweden, parental leave can be taken up to the child's age of eight, so they can respond to particular emergencies in the household, especially caregiving responsibilities, if the child is dealing with any mental health issues. This kind of thinking about leave beyond just the beginning and the end of life....
We've seen with the pandemic that all the way through life there are those moments of uncertainty. Women should not have to pay that high cost of leaving work, reducing work or jeopardizing their long-term economic earnings and pensions because of those uncertainties. I think public policy-wise, we could think more creatively about special benefits in a broader way.
Also, to build on what Nora was saying, the workplace policies are also really important. Nora Spinks and I are both involved in a project that is trying to put in place a caregiver standard in workplaces where employers would have a consistent way of working with employees when they have these caregiving responsibilities on a regular basis, if they're caring for an elderly person at home or a disabled family member. There needs to be some standard for this in workplaces so they, too, can accommodate workers, especially women, but hopefully men as well.
:
Mental health has been a concern for a long time. COVID has magnified, amplified and intensified the need for our understanding and recognition of the importance of mental health.
The research is clear. People who are trying to balance work and family and provide care during COVID are indicating their mental health has been impacted. We need to know where people are going for help. The first place they tend to go is their personal circle of support—their friends, colleagues, family members and extended family members. They're reaching out to each other. Then they go to their first circle of public support—usually their family physician. The family physicians are often the ones who have to give them the bad news that mental health services and treatment are really difficult to access. It's then that the pressure starts to build on these individuals and their families.
We have been conducting a study with family therapists across the country, and asking them what's coming through their doors. We're asking how well the therapists are doing, caring for those caregivers and those individuals dealing with their loneliness, anxieties and depression. We're seeing that family therapists, psychologists and sociologists across the country providing these services are finding that e-health and telehealth, providing counselling over the phone or over the Internet, is making it more accessible to more people. They're increasing access.
For some, they're indicating that it's increasing their effectiveness by being able to schedule these routines. They are also able to provide therapy while people are in their own environment. It provides them with a lot of information they wouldn't otherwise receive.
It's something we need to continue to monitor. Clearly, there is a shortage of mental health services. Certainly, from the COVID experience, telehealth and tele-counselling experiences are going to reshape mental health services for decades to come.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to give some information. For mental health issues, especially for seniors who are in isolation, I am listening a lot, and I have talked to people in long-term care. I was so glad when the announced $240 million to develop, expand and launch virtual care, which is the Wellness Together portal. When adults need a helpline they can text front-line workers at 741741. I'm getting a lot of positive feedback on the virtual care.
My question is for Ms. Spinks and anybody else.
There are federal support initiatives, such as the Canada child benefit. I want to let you know that in my riding of Brampton South, the Canada child benefit has helped over 24,000 children a year. I know other members have heard that too. For example, in 's riding, 37,000 children are getting the benefit.
Has your research indicated that the Canada child benefit has helped families to access child care so that parents are more able to participate in the workforce instead of being dependent? I know mostly women are taking on child care and are not being paid.
Madam Chair, I want to share my time with Marc after this question is answered.
:
The child care benefit has certainly had a positive impact on families and family life.
What we've been asking during COVID.... In the early days of COVID, one of the highest levels of stress and anxiety was related to financial stress. People were worried they weren't going to have adequate income. That was their number one stress.
Once the CERB, the CCB and the supplementary benefits started to roll out, the financial anxiety started to decrease and other anxieties started to increase because of isolation. As somebody mentioned earlier, there was a need for respite, breaks and rest.
One of the things we have been documenting very clearly over the last several months is that people are running full out, non-stop. There are no breaks. There is no rest. There are no weekends. People are working. If you're working outside the home in the service sector or the health care sector, your hours have gone up; the demands on you have gone up and your number of shifts has gone up. If you're working from home, you are working well into the night and over weekends.
We really need to understand how significant financial assistance is in tempering the anxiety that people are feeling. This is the CERB, the CCB and some of the EI benefits that Andrea mentioned, with the extension of some of the available caregiver relief benefits that are targeted specifically to either veteran families or low-income families. Financial security makes a huge difference.
:
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
My thanks to the witnesses again.
Earlier, you touched on a subject that Mr. Serré has just mentioned again, namely the role of men and how they can contribute to the family environment and do the invisible work.
I would also like to highlight the incredible success of paternity leave in Quebec. The numbers are impressive. Until 2006, only one Quebec father in five took a few days of parental leave; outside Quebec, only 10% to 15% of Canadian fathers took it. Today, 80% of Quebec fathers stop working when a child is born to care for the child for several weeks.
So the Quebec parental insurance plan, which replaced the Canadian parental leave in Quebec, has made a big difference for new fathers. It created a paternity leave reserved for them alone, which is not even transferable to the mother. This was an extraordinary step forward.
What measures could be created at the federal level to further encourage fathers? What other barriers could be removed to help fathers play more of a role in the family and do more of the invisible work?
:
Madam Chair, committee members, I would like to thank you for the opportunity today to share with you some observations on women's unpaid work.
In the time I have, I would like to begin with a portrait of unpaid work in Canada, including caregiving. The second part of my presentation will focus on the situation of health care support workers.
According to the most recent data from the general social survey, women spend more time than men doing unpaid work. Every five years, the results of this survey provide insights into the time use of Canadians, including time spent on unpaid work, which shed light on how Canadians make use of their time and what contributes to their well-being and stress levels. The most recent data on time use are from 2015.
In this survey, unpaid work is defined as the time spent doing housework, performing routine tasks related to the physical care of children, and providing care to an adult family member or friend.
In 2015, women spent an average of 2.8 hours per day on housework—54 minutes more than men, who spent 1.9 hours per day.
Women were more likely than men to perform routine tasks related to the care of children: 76% of women versus 57% of men. In addition, women spent almost one hour more per day than men on these tasks.
The proportion of women who provided care to an adult family member or friend on any given day was three times higher than the proportion of men in 2015. It was 3% for women compared with 1% for men. Among those who provided this care, women spent an average of 42 minutes more than men.
While women tend to spend more time than men on unpaid activities, they are less likely to be in the labour force. And for those who are, they are more likely to have a part-time job. According to data from the labour force survey, 57% of women in Canada were employed in 2015, compared with 65% of men.
In addition, women who were employed generally spent on average 6.9 hours less per week at work than men, all jobs combined. This was 29.6 hours versus 36.5 hours.
The situation in November was similar: 56% of women were employed, compared with 65% of men. What is more, women worked 5.8 hours less per week than men, based on seasonally unadjusted data from the labour force survey.
It is important to recognize that the disproportionate unpaid work done by women for their families favours the higher labour force participation rate and longer working hours of men.
Reflecting this disproportionate share of unpaid work, women were also more likely than men to feel time pressures. In 2015, 49% of women aged 25 to 54 in Canada reported that, at the end of their day, they had often not accomplished what they had set out to do, compared with 43% of men. In addition, 69% of women said they felt stressed when they didn’t have enough time, versus 60% of men. Finally, 46% of women reported feeling constantly under stress trying to accomplish more than they can handle, as opposed to 40% of men.
In April, Statistics Canada conducted a voluntary data collection survey on mental health during the pandemic. The results show that the women who took part in the survey were more likely than men to say that their life had been moderately or severely stressful. More precisely, 30.5% of part of women surveyed said that their life had been moderately or severely stressful during the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to 24% for men.
It's possible that some women reported higher anxiety than men because the quarantine heightened the unequal sharing by women and men of unpaid family work, by which we mean caring for children and household work. The closing of daycare centres, schools and businesses like restaurants and dry cleaners may have led women to do additional unpaid household tasks that would normally have been sent out to paid services, or for which they could formerly rely on help from parents or friends.
Furthermore, according to the findings of the Canadian Perspectives Survey Series 3: Resuming Economic and Social Activities During COVID-19, employment and the workplace, both of which have been considerably affected by the pandemic, have an impact on how couples share parenting tasks.
More specifically, when men were unemployed or working at home, it appeared to encourage sharing more of the parenting tasks, because men in such situations were more likely to say that parenting tasks had been shared equally, compared to men who had a job and were working away from home. However, when the opposite was the case, with the women out of work or working at home, they were more likely to say that they were mainly responsible for parenting tasks and less likely to say that these were shared equally.
I would also like to mention the circumstances of paid work for women, and more specifically support workers in the health field. These workers contributed enormously in recent months in the combat against COVID-19, and the vast majority of them are women.
The COVID-19 pandemic put the spotlight on the key role performed by these workers. In addition to the risk of contamination to which they are exposed, the media described the poor working conditions in which they sometimes had to work, and the shortage of workers in this sector of the economy.
According to the seasonally adjusted data in the Labour Force Survey, there were 300,000 health support workers in November, defined in the survey as nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates. This number was relatively stable compared to the same period last year.
In several respects, however, their working conditions were much worse than for most workers.
In November, their average hourly wage was approximately $22, about $8 less than the national average. These employees also worked for approximately three fewer hours per week than average and were slightly more likely to be working in temporary jobs and to have more than one job. More specifically, in November, health support workers worked 29 hours, compared to 32 hours for other employees, and 15% of them were in temporary jobs, compared to 11% for other employees. Furthermore, 6% of health support workers had more than one job, compared to 4% for other employees.
The Labour Force Survey data show that for many immigrants, these professions are a way to enter the labour market. Indeed, four of ten health support workers in November were immigrants, compared to one of four for other jobs. These data also show that these employees are clearly…
:
Madam Chair, thank you for the questions.
You are correct. The last time we conducted the time use survey, which is part of the general social survey program, was in 2015. This survey is conducted every five years. Actually, at the moment we are developing the content of the survey. The next one that we are planning to collect is in early 2022.
At this point, I cannot answer your question directly. What I can offer you is that through the last time use survey, we are able to conduct some analysis looking at the changes in terms of previous results of the time use survey.
The time use survey was first conducted in.... I think we did the comparison between 1986 and 2015. Based on that analysis, we did find that, between 1986 and 2015, fathers are spending more time on preparing meals and mothers are providing nearly two-thirds of the total hours spent helping and caring for children. Fathers are more likely to engage in household chores, like housework and whatnot. Between that period, from 1986 to 2015, there is an increase in fathers participating in the unpaid work.
:
I'd like to thank the Statistics Canada representatives for being here today.
Your organization has proved that when you can gather data and numbers about matters like women's invisible work, it makes it possible to suggest measures that can mitigate any related problems.
For example, you said that the statistics had shown the effects of the pandemic on invisible work. The figures established that there were differences between men and women, as well as other comparisons, during the pandemic.
We are still in the midst of the pandemic, but economic recovery is a major issue. I would like to know how we can study the numbers to see how the situation is doing over time. We know that jobs in sectors that will do well during the economic recovery, like infrastructures and construction, are filled by a much higher percentage of men. On the contrary, for sectors in which jobs have a much higher percentage of women, like restaurants and the cultural industry, the recovery will be much slower.
How does Statistics Canada expect the impact of the pandemic on invisible work for women to play out, compared to the situation for men?
:
For the general social survey program, yes, we want to do more frequent surveys. In the program itself, we have seven themes, and we cycle the themes. In certain years, we have the themes overlap within a five-year cycle. This is only for the purpose of the competing demands for the different content of each cycle.
For the unpaid worker segment, that theme, a lot of the estimates come from the time you survey, but we also have another cycle called caregiving and receiving that will give us a little more about the dynamics of caregiving and receiving. We have a cycle called family dynamics that looks at the relationship within the family, fertility, intentions and whatnot. We also have a survey called giving, volunteering and participation that also measures another aspect of unpaid work. We combine to holistically look at the unpaid economy. We need to look at the relevant cycles of that aspect.
I agree with you that time use, and we use time use a lot to measure the unpaid work, is not an easy survey, because it's diary based and it imposes a lot of response burden on our respondents. For us, can we do it? I think we can, but at the same time, we also need to balance response burden and how much we ask our Canadians to respond to in our survey.
To answer your questions about the impact of COVID, do we have information about the impact of COVID? The general social survey is a regular program at Statistics Canada, but during the initial stage of the lockdown, StatsCan really mobilized to put in other alternate collection mechanisms and platforms like the crowd-sourced survey and the web panel, so we measured the direct impact of COVID. We have more targets in terms of the questions on the impact of COVID whereas, for the general social survey, because we want to measure how social conditions change over time, we have to maintain certain consistency in terms of the content from the previous cycle.
Thank you.
[Translation]
Thank you for your question. I'll reply in English.
[English]
As we are all well aware, the pandemic actually exacerbates the inequalities faced by many communities, vulnerable communities, indigenous populations, racialized communities and whatnot. We have put a number of measures in place for the diversity and inclusion lens, and one involved the work of my colleague, Vince.
In the labour force survey, and since July, we incorporated population questions, group questions, which we could use to derive the visible minority population. We also include in the general social survey the cycle on social identity, which looks at trust, a sense of belonging, trust of institutions, etc.
For that survey, we actually increased, through work with Canadian Heritage, the sample so we can provide estimates on a number of visible minority groups as well as education and income levels. There are a couple of efforts we have already put in place to provide that disaggregated data lens and the diversity and inclusions.
Going forward in the work we are going to do, we hope to, for any of our analyses, include the diversity and inclusion lens analysis. I'm responsible for—