Juno News - A real conversation about family policy in Canada

00:00:00.000 Canadians need to start having more kids. We shouldn't be shy about that fact. We should all

00:00:04.500 be more pro-family, pro-kids, and pro-mothers. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:21.220 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today. So as you saw in recent weeks

00:00:26.340 and months and with the budget being rolled out by the Trudeau Liberals, part of what they've

00:00:29.980 announced is that they've reached a deal with all of the provinces to introduce a $10 per day

00:00:35.280 child care program. This is modeled after the Quebec public daycare program. So we now have

00:00:40.640 government daycares all over the country rolling out. Many people are celebrating this fact. Many

00:00:45.620 people even on the right are excited about the idea that more mothers will be able to get back into the

00:00:50.560 workforce and that they will have a place to put their kids. It may even encourage families to have

00:00:55.020 more kids. I found this incredibly arrogant. Chrystia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister in the 0.99

00:01:00.680 House of Commons, called this policy women's liberation, an example of feminist policy in 1.00

00:01:07.480 action. So I want to quickly play that clip for you. Here it is.

00:01:11.900 We have now signed agreements on early learning and child care with every single province and

00:01:19.460 territory in our great country. This is women's liberation. It will mean more women no longer 1.00

00:01:27.340 need to choose between motherhood. 1.00

00:01:29.560 This is feminist economic policy in action, and it will make life more affordable for middle-class 1.00

00:01:45.080 Canadian families. So Chrystia Freeland very boldly says that women will no longer have to choose

00:01:51.140 between having a family or having a career, as if that is really the major struggle that women

00:01:56.840 in today's world have. Well, someone who writes about this issue and speaks very clearly on it

00:02:02.560 is Ginny Ross. So I wanted to invite her on the podcast today to discuss it. Ginny is the vice

00:02:07.940 president at Crestview Strategy. She's worked at Queen's Park, was a party organizer for the Progressive

00:02:13.060 Conservative Party of Ontario, and has been a lifelong political activist. She's a contributor

00:02:17.380 over at The Hub. She writes occasionally for The National Post and is a frequent panelist

00:02:22.300 on television and radio outlets. Ginny, it's great to have you on the program.

00:02:26.500 Thanks, Candace.

00:02:27.800 So, well, first, I just want to get your quick reaction on the government, $10 a day government

00:02:33.680 daycare, whether you think that that will, as Chrystia Freeland claims, sort of solve women's 1.00

00:02:39.820 liberation and allow women to have it all, have both a family and a career, as so many 0.57

00:02:45.060 women struggle with. 1.00

00:02:47.040 Yeah, I mean, I find it offensive on a number of fronts, and maybe it's worth going through

00:02:52.320 them, because I think they're all important. One is, well, first, there's the policy matter,

00:02:57.600 which is, will the program even work? Like, will there actually be all these new childcare

00:03:02.480 spaces that are affordable for people with different incomes across Canada? And I think we have all

00:03:07.520 of the reasons to be skeptical of that. If you look at the Quebec model that they're trying to

00:03:12.140 imitate or bring across the country, there's massive wait lists for it. It's hurt people who want a

00:03:19.660 different option for childcare and can't go with the nine to five because they work different hours,

00:03:24.120 maybe they're a shift worker, whatever, so there's almost no flexibility. The actual program itself,

00:03:29.060 there have been studies that the outcome for children are great. There are all sorts of reasons

00:03:34.020 by public policy, even if you believe that it will increase flexible childcare, which I don't.

00:03:40.960 Her comments around the premise of, first of all, women's liberation, I mean, I think most women in 0.60

00:03:47.380 Canada feel pretty liberated. I don't know that people feel there's like an academic epidemic of

00:03:53.080 women being held down by public policy in Canada. Second of all, and it's sort of the same point,

00:04:00.480 I think, you know, you and I both, I won't speak for my husband. I follow your husband. I know a lot

00:04:06.980 of other men who are really active in their kids' lives who also want better childcare options. Like,

00:04:12.940 it's a very strange thing to make this about women when in a lot of cases, you have parents who are

00:04:19.560 making choices about their lives, who want more flexibility, who want more options. And yes, maybe

00:04:24.320 they both want to pursue careers and have a way of having their children cared for while they work.

00:04:30.600 But what does that say about those men who are really active, in many cases, in their kids' lives

00:04:35.940 that childcare doesn't have anything to do with them, seemingly, according to the federal finance

00:04:40.120 minister? So, I mean, I could go on, but there are so many ways that I find that a problematic comment

00:04:46.080 from her relative to the program.

00:04:47.700 Yeah. And it's funny, too, because I talked to a lot of my female friends about this, the idea that,

00:04:52.860 you know, women can have it all. We can have successful careers that are meaningful and 1.00

00:04:57.620 fulfilling. And we can also have these meaningful, fulfilling family lives with a great support of

00:05:02.960 husbands and children. And it's sort of a paradox, because when you become a parent, you realize that

00:05:07.740 your time is limited. And so the actual struggle is, where do you want to put your time? Do you want

00:05:13.440 to spend more of your time in a day job that you might not even get a lot of satisfaction from,

00:05:18.400 you might not even love? And you're forgoing time with your children, these, like, incredibly important

00:05:23.140 fleeting moments where they're learning to talk and speak and walk and all these milestones.

00:05:29.540 And so this idea that, oh, the government solved the problem, all you have to do is just drop your

00:05:33.440 kid off at some government daycare, and voila, like, your life will be happy. It's insulting. And even

00:05:40.400 more so to your point that it excludes men from the conversation, because it's expected that men

00:05:46.420 are going to be working and that it's women that have to make this struggle. I want to ask you about 0.57

00:05:52.620 a piece that you wrote over at The Hub. I thought it was really interesting. You said, don't be shy

00:05:56.760 about it. Family values and babies are good things. You talked a little bit about how there's a

00:06:00.820 revitalization, particularly on the right, with natalism and people having more conversations about how we

00:06:06.860 need to have more kids, we should have more kids, and we shouldn't be shy about it. But how elite

00:06:11.480 opinion sort of, you know, the experts don't want to talk about it because it's our key and it's

00:06:16.760 personal. What made you want to champion this issue? And what makes you so confident and brave

00:06:24.600 to go out there and speak about it?

00:06:26.700 I was sort of triggered by a series of Paul Kornman tweets that I mentioned in the story,

00:06:32.880 and people should check it out. But it was sort of this analysis that, and I think this is true of

00:06:39.120 lots of sort of like centrist thinkers, of which most economists would consider themselves centrist,

00:06:43.140 I think, or maybe left of center, and liberals, who think that the only thing that matters when it

00:06:52.180 comes to families and their size are sort of like economic measures, and this question of like,

00:06:56.980 people in the workforce, and that, because we've now put women in the workforce, that means we have

00:07:02.260 equality, or we're trying to achieve equality, therefore, birth rates have dropped, and that's, that

00:07:06.740 makes it okay. And the only people, according to Krugman, who want to see birth rates go up are people

00:07:12.740 who are religious, you know, God forbid. So, so I, my reaction to that was just so visceral, because I had 1.00

00:07:21.940 in following this issue noticed that, actually, there are some really strong demographers who've

00:07:26.420 studied the issue in great, great detail, and no one has a perfect answer to why birth rates are

00:07:30.500 dropping basically all over the world. But what we do know is that when you ask people, they want to

00:07:37.060 have more kids than they're having. And that includes women, it's especially true of women. To an earlier 1.00

00:07:41.940 point you were making, many women would choose to stay home, many people would choose to stay home if

00:07:46.740 they could, if they could afford to, if they could have a single family home. There's a candidate for Senate

00:07:51.860 in Arizona right now named Blake Masters, who's running on this premise of imagine if you could

00:07:56.340 support a family on one income. And I think what he does with his political messaging is really smart

00:08:02.660 and correct. Part of what I tried to do in my column, which is, we don't need to choose between an

00:08:08.100 economic policy solution or a social policy solution. It's both, right, our culture and our social

00:08:14.260 environment, which dictate the public policy choices we make, are what impact these kinds of big macro

00:08:21.060 trends. And if we think that people aren't having enough kids, which I think we can all agree that

00:08:26.020 the goal of plug policy is to give people better, more fulfilled, happier lives, and they're telling

00:08:30.420 us in surveys they want more kids than they're having, there's obviously a problem there. And what he

00:08:35.220 gets at with his, with his messaging is maybe there's a, maybe there's a cost of living challenge.

00:08:41.220 Maybe there's, I mean, in Canada, we know inflation is a big problem. We know people can, in many cases,

00:08:46.260 parents are choosing not to buy beef at the grocery store right now because groceries are

00:08:50.820 so expensive. They're, they're opting out to fill their car with gas. And so those material challenges,

00:08:56.260 plus a culture that is telling women that they're not fulfilling their duty unless they're working 1.00

00:09:01.620 for some sort of feminist cause, I think those things are starting to pile up and they're starting 1.00

00:09:05.620 to really influence the choices people are making. And ultimately people are making choices they're not

00:09:09.700 happy with, and they're having fewer kids. And by the time they decide they maybe want to have more,

00:09:14.900 they're disappointed in that it's too late because there are imperatives we don't like to talk about,

00:09:18.420 biological imperatives we don't like to talk about because it's uncomfortable. But I, but I think we

00:09:22.820 should because if people aren't achieving their desired birth rate, that's a problem for their 0.85

00:09:27.620 happiness and their fulfillment and for society. Well, you can look at surveys tracking women's

00:09:34.420 happiness in particular. I mean, across society, our society is becoming less and less happy and

00:09:38.900 fulfilled self-reporting, but women in particular is gone down, you know, markedly. And I know

00:09:45.700 for my generation, it was like, you go to college, get a career, exactly what you're saying,

00:09:49.620 women's liberation, it's like your duty to go out and and put career first. And then you get to the 1.00

00:09:54.500 point where you're like, well, you know, I've gone to university, I've put all this energy and investment

00:09:59.460 into my career, I need to go fulfill that. And I know that so many women that go off and find careers that 1.00

00:10:06.340 they hate and then they're unhappy with and you know, really high, high level, high achieving people,

00:10:10.820 lawyers, doctors, those kinds of things, and realize it's not really what they want. So

00:10:16.020 fundamentally, I think it is cultural, but there is that economic component. I hear more and more

00:10:22.820 conservatives talking about how the Canada needs to get to a place where a family can survive on

00:10:27.780 one income. That seems so foreign, especially in a city like Toronto, where I think the average 0.99

00:10:32.420 home is now like $2 million or something like that. So so many families are working so hard with two

00:10:37.940 incomes, just to save up to buy a house or, you know, to the point you're making these crazy times

00:10:43.300 with inflation, buying gas and buying meat. I mean, I think a lot of people put off childhood,

00:10:50.740 having kids, motherhood, parenthood, because they can't afford it, or they think they need

00:10:55.060 those two incomes. So what do you do you think we're just beyond the point now where

00:11:00.020 a single single income household can can sustain? I mean, I grew up in a household where my dad worked,

00:11:05.540 and my mom was a stay at home mom, and she never had a job. And that was kind of the norm in my community

00:11:10.580 in Vancouver, I guess, in the 80s and 90s. It doesn't seem like anyone does that anymore.

00:11:15.300 Every every family I know, every couple I know has a working two working spouses or two working 1.00

00:11:20.980 parents. Do you think we can get back to that that place where we have an economy where you only need

00:11:25.540 one income to survive? I do. It seems a long way off. I mean, to your point, I think there are many

00:11:31.540 people with two incomes who can't afford a home level of one. But I think it's a lot of goal. And I think

00:11:36.500 more importantly, we need to discipline the public conversation around this issue. I think the vast

00:11:41.780 majority of people who speak publicly on public policy would say, well, the federal government,

00:11:48.340 especially by governments in general, just can't impact something like a birth rate, it's too hard.

00:11:54.180 There are social policy is, is really narrow, and it's the purview of local governments at most,

00:12:00.420 but you know, we shouldn't be interfering in people's bedrooms and that kind of thing.

00:12:04.100 But I think we need to be more clear with people about the fact that economic policy,

00:12:10.420 like a policy, like, like, and they're all choices, by the way, like, the housing crisis

00:12:14.740 exists because of choices that politicians have made to favor and envy is, and people who want,

00:12:21.380 who don't want to see no homes built over people who are shut up at the housing market. That's choice.

00:12:26.020 A public policy makers make that choice every day. And, you know, you can apply that to all sorts of

00:12:29.780 of some of the policy choices that led to the inflation, inflationary situation we're in right

00:12:35.140 now, not just on homes, but on, but on other fronts. All of these public policy choices have

00:12:41.220 have implications. And I think that they are having an impact on on at least how open Canada

00:12:47.620 is as a country to or how encouraging Canada is the country to people to grow their families

00:12:52.580 and pursue their, their dreams that we know that they want. And so, so it does seem far off,

00:12:58.660 but I think it's possible. And I think our public, our body politic should pressure politicians to,

00:13:04.980 to try to speak to that. And I think politicians who are trying to speak to that are going to find

00:13:09.460 that it's fertile ground for them politically, because they're going to speak to people who,

00:13:14.980 who have been making certain choices about their lives, because they think politicians don't have

00:13:18.980 answers. And all of a sudden they'll realize actually there may be public policy that could

00:13:22.580 change this. If I could all of a sudden afford a house, maybe I'd have a second kit, maybe a third

00:13:26.820 kit. Absolutely. And, you know, it's definitely intertwined there. Are there any examples of

00:13:33.300 pro family, pro natal policies around the world that have worked? I just anecdotally, I was in Singapore

00:13:38.820 like 10 years ago, and they had this like weird campaign where they were trying to encourage

00:13:43.540 people to have babies and they had like kind of almost creepy billboards up. I think they had

00:13:48.420 like a national date night or something where they were like encouraging parents to go out and go on

00:13:52.660 dates and make babies essentially. I don't know if that was actually successful or not. I'm wondering

00:13:57.220 if you've looked into this at all and if you know of any. Most demographers are pretty agreed that these

00:14:02.580 kind of experiments aren't working very well. The one exception at Outlier is Hungary, which, you know,

00:14:09.860 people on the right of center know Hungary is this kind of like nationalist, really, you know,

00:14:15.220 right wing government. That's sort of like the example of a right wing nationalist government

00:14:21.940 really pushing forward lots of public policy, new public policy in the last, say, five, 10 years,

00:14:26.820 five years, certainly. And they have actually increased their birth rate and they're like very

00:14:30.820 explicit about you. You basically pay no taxes if you have more than like four or five kids in Hungary.

00:14:36.260 They've made it, they've chosen to really like lower the burden and try to incentivize through financial

00:14:40.820 means people having kids and it has made a bit of a difference. So it is possible. That's a pretty,

00:14:47.780 that's a pretty like blunt instrument. I think that whether or not you get the results you want,

00:14:54.340 I still think the public policy choices we make and the way leaders talk culturally about what's

00:14:59.940 important and what's not matters and send signals to people. You know, I'll jump back really quickly to

00:15:06.260 a point you were making about what it was like for art. I think we were from a similar generation

00:15:11.540 growing up. And for me, for my generation growing up in a pretty atheistic urban environment,

00:15:19.460 it was just not viewed as something that a young woman should want to grow a family and to have kids. 0.96

00:15:27.300 And I think you're now seeing a trend of frankly, like a business market for the fertility industry,

00:15:35.300 not just the obvious medical interventions to try to increase people's fertility, which they should

00:15:40.980 obviously pursue, but like devices even to track your ability to get pregnant later in life and

00:15:49.460 this whole marketplace of capitalizing on women who in their mid or late 30s are choosing to have kids.

00:15:58.180 And it's great that they are, but in many cases, I think certainly anecdotally,

00:16:01.860 you're starting to hear people who, women, who didn't really quite realize that the choices they've

00:16:07.300 made would mean that their childbearing mode would be delayed and then tougher and that it may

00:16:11.540 be, may not be possible for them to have the big families that they want. And I think that's a bit

00:16:16.820 of a failure on the public policy front too. If we're, if we've created a public health education

00:16:22.100 environment where women don't know what their most fertile years are, it's uncomfortable to talk about, 0.83

00:16:27.140 but I think that's a problem. And I think we owe it to people to make sure they have all the

00:16:30.020 information they need to make the best possible choice. They should have better material,

00:16:34.180 economic circumstances, better information, and they should feel like they can make the best

00:16:38.740 possible choice to pursue a happy end that they see for themselves.

00:16:43.540 Well, just again, speaking anecdotally from like my friend group, it seems like everyone focused so

00:16:48.740 much on education and career development in their twenties and then thirties was a time that they

00:16:53.060 started having kids. And you know, it's just objectively harder to have kids when you're in your thirties

00:16:58.980 because you're a little bit older. And, and, you know, you talk about all of these devices,

00:17:03.620 you can track your ovulation cycles and that kind of thing. There's also been a huge boom in IVF

00:17:09.540 treatments. I know in Ontario it's paid for by the government, but they're still privately run and

00:17:14.020 there's clinics kind of popping up everywhere because so many people kind of, again, just didn't

00:17:19.300 realize how difficult it might be to have children in their thirties. I know, again, just from my group of

00:17:25.220 friends, some families that have struggled with that and struggled to have kids and end up going

00:17:29.700 the adoption route. You know, I see some hope because I have some friends that are also in

00:17:34.660 their twenties and some colleagues and I see them having kids earlier. And it's sort of, to me,

00:17:40.900 reassuring that maybe that messaging has changed a little bit, although I don't know if that's just

00:17:44.740 very niche and that most, most women are continuing on that same path of focusing on career in their

00:17:51.860 twenties and then trying to have a family in their thirties. I wonder in Canada, I have another friend

00:17:59.620 from Denmark and she's talking about how they get paid to have kids. The government actually gives them

00:18:04.180 like a bonus. And this idea of like, maybe if you have a big family, you shouldn't pay income taxes

00:18:09.140 or you should have a different tax structure. Do you think that something like that could work in

00:18:14.340 Canada? And do you see anyone talking about it? I know there's a conservative leadership race going

00:18:18.980 on right now, or any of the candidates talking about it? Is this something that you've heard come up at

00:18:23.140 all? I mean, it kind of exists in Canada. This was a Stephen Harper policy innovation that the liberals

00:18:30.260 have actually continued. They don't talk about it a lot, but Stephen Harper came up with sending parents

00:18:35.860 checks in the mail as a way. And frankly, it was in response to the liberal sort of cradle to grave,

00:18:42.740 the only option we can dream of to encourage people to have kids is to sort of institutionalize 0.99

00:18:48.100 childcare. You know, and infamously when Stephen Harper first floated the idea of people giving back

00:18:55.780 cash to parents instead to make their own choices to spend, you know, to maybe give to a grandparent to

00:19:00.420 care for the kid, to subsidize the grandparent's income or to a neighbor or to defray the

00:19:05.620 cost of staying home for a stay-at-home parent. A liberal strategist infamously said people would

00:19:10.660 spend it on beer and popcorn, which I think tells you everything you need to know about liberals

00:19:15.860 thinking people can better spend their own money. But actually, American demographers look to the

00:19:22.820 Harper example as something that can work. And Biden did something similar very recently, like near the

00:19:29.940 tail end of COVID. As part of his stimulus, a big part of it was, and he worked with Mitt Romney and

00:19:35.780 other right of center legislators in the US to send people cash, people who were either pregnant and 0.89

00:19:43.060 expecting a child or who had a young child at home as a way of kind of encouraging people to and rewarding

00:19:49.940 people for making that choice in the context of COVID. And rewarding is the wrong word, more like not

00:19:56.820 penalizing them for making that choice or removing the penalty and making it a bit easier. I have

00:20:02.020 also the commentary on Biden stimulus spending, which I think is part of the problem with inflation, but

00:20:06.580 it is clear that there was a little mini baby boom after those checks were delivered because it gave

00:20:12.260 people a bit of material comfort that, you know, coming out of COVID, they might be able to afford to

00:20:17.540 make that choice to have that baby. And so, and this is consistent with what demographers have found,

00:20:23.860 which is that material support can help a little bit, but not all the way. There are other cultural

00:20:29.700 factors at play. And if you can defray some of the cost or give some people some money back in their

00:20:35.860 pocket to feel like it will be such a penalty to have a kid. And that's really what it is, removing

00:20:40.420 the penalty of having a kid. It can make a difference. There is still this persistent challenge of dropping

00:20:47.460 birth rates in most Western countries around the world. And that extra gap, that extra cultural gap,

00:20:53.540 most people attribute to like declining religiosity, increased workism, as they call it, which is

00:20:58.900 sort of like what you described, this fixation on building your career before you have kids.

00:21:03.860 And I think that to the point of my column, I think that has to be addressed by culture,

00:21:10.020 by leaders encouraging people to pursue the way of life that they want. But the material can help,

00:21:16.500 it can make a difference at the margins.

00:21:17.860 Amy Quinton It's interesting that Biden took a sort of a page from

00:21:21.620 Harper, although it's interesting just to note that so Harper introduced the child care benefit

00:21:26.660 as an alternative to government daycare, Trudeau kept it and expanded it. And then in addition,

00:21:31.460 also brought in government daycare. So we now have two policy solutions trying to address the same

00:21:36.180 problem. I've always been interested in this sort of difference between the Canadian model and the

00:21:39.940 American model, because it's sort of an experiment playing out in real time. And my sister lives in the US,

00:21:45.140 I've got a bunch of friends down there. And it's really interesting, because most companies don't

00:21:49.860 give extended maternity leave, the government doesn't mandate it. I have so many friends that

00:21:55.940 literally six weeks after the baby is born, and they're back at their desk. And, you know,

00:22:00.100 for anyone who's been around a six week old baby, that's kind of shocking that that's what mothers do. 0.97

00:22:04.660 But what I find in the US is that it's much more binary, like so many women just don't go back to 0.99

00:22:09.300 work. It's just that's the decision once they start having kids, it's like, they're unwilling to go back to

00:22:13.300 work because they're not going to go back that early. And they don't like the options. Whereas

00:22:16.980 in Canada, we have this very generous year long maternity leave program. And it's great for moms, 1.00

00:22:23.700 they don't have to worry about it. Some of them even take longer, I think some government jobs,

00:22:27.940 you can take up to two years or up to a year and a half, and they hold your position, which seems on

00:22:32.020 the surface very pro mother pro family. But then you get to the problem where, you know, the child is two

00:22:38.260 and three. And, you know, the mother feels the need to go back to her career, she's want to lose

00:22:42.580 that job. But then at the same time, there's not a good place to leave the kid. And I guess that's

00:22:46.580 the solution that Chrysia Freeland and Trudeau are are touting here. I'm just wondering, as someone

00:22:53.700 who spends time thinking about this, do you think the Canadian model is objectively better? Or do you

00:22:59.060 think that that perhaps there's problems with it that we don't see? Because we like to think of

00:23:03.540 ourselves as more generous and more in this regard pro mother, but I don't know if necessarily that's

00:23:08.500 the case. And I think the US still has higher birth rates than Canada does.

00:23:12.180 Yeah, I don't know that it's better from a direct birth rate perspective. I think it's better

00:23:19.300 if your goal and I think this is my goal is to get to a greater neutrality that doesn't penalize

00:23:25.140 parents for choosing to stay home. Because the longer the leave you offer to a point, the more I

00:23:33.060 think people feel like they don't have to make that binary choice so early in a in a baby's life.

00:23:37.700 And I think that's good. I think that's like a good in and of itself. And I think it plays out

00:23:42.420 in positive ways in Canada. But what the problem comes when you have legislators using the kind of

00:23:48.180 language Freeland did, where you start to talk about like the moralism of women going back to work

00:23:53.700 every single instance, or parents going back to work in every single instance, because it starts to

00:23:59.700 creep into public policy decision making that the goal isn't to give people choice or flexibility or

00:24:05.460 to be neutral about childbearing. The public policy goal is to get as many people working as possible,

00:24:12.660 because people are just, you know, GDP contributing units of economic input. And that is the true end of

00:24:20.340 gender equality. That is when I start to get really uncomfortable. And I worry that constant enhancements 1.00

00:24:26.820 and fixation on cradle to grave childcare policy are in pursuit of that end, as opposed to the end of

00:24:38.420 women and men and parents in general making the best choice for their family and for what's going

00:24:43.860 to make them the happiest and contribute the most to like a thriving society and culture in Canada.

00:24:49.300 Well, it reminds me of another piece you had in The Hub last year, where you were talking about

00:24:53.780 conservatives. And you wrote this a conservative feminism should drop labor force participation as 1.00

00:24:58.980 the only measure of gender equality, you argued that the liberal approach has failed and that not

00:25:03.540 all women are interested in full time work, nor is it best for their families. So just final question 1.00

00:25:09.220 for you, can you can you elaborate? And how do you think conservative feminism if you want to use that 1.00

00:25:14.420 term? What should focus on instead instead of labor force equality?

00:25:18.740 I mean, I think I'll repeat myself a little bit just to say that I think it should focus on

00:25:25.220 women having true the true choices to contribute to their families, society and the workplace in the 0.96

00:25:31.700 way that I think they think is best. I think our I think our society should reward caring work,

00:25:38.740 whether that's caring for older people and seniors or babies and kids, or just each other. Whether that's

00:25:47.940 caring for your own kids or caring for someone else's kids, which often those kind of flexible your

00:25:53.220 neighbor caring for your kids. Often those people are women, and they're not rewarded by a child 1.00

00:25:58.900 care cradle to grave, you know, institutional child care system. And so and I think it's okay that

00:26:05.620 women for whatever reason, choose some of those caring roles in society more often than men do. 0.98

00:26:11.300 I think conservative feminism looks like a public policy environment that doesn't penalize women for 1.00

00:26:17.140 making choices that they think are best for themselves and their families. And I don't

00:26:21.460 think the liberal policy framework does that. Well, Ginny, I really appreciate you coming on

00:26:26.020 the show. There's so many interesting areas when it comes to family policy that don't get the proper

00:26:32.820 attention in the media and in society. So it's great to have this conversation. Hopefully we can

00:26:37.220 start having more and more of these kinds of conversations because it's so important. So I really

00:26:40.820 appreciate your time. Thanks for coming on True North. Thanks, Candice. All right, that's Ginny Roth. I'm

00:26:45.060 Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

Juno News - May 04, 2022

A real conversation about family policy in Canada

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