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NORA SPINKS KEYNOTEFAMILIES: WHAT, SO WHAT NOW?

CEO THE VANIER INSTITUTE OF THE FAMILY, CANADA

MS SPINKS: Good morning. I too would like to acknowledge the traditional

owners of the land on which we gather today and to

acknowledge and pay my respects to their Elders past,

present and future. It is my pleasure to be here today, as the

Vanier Institute of the Family we always look at the Australian

Institute for Family Studies as our cousin. We share many of

the same concerns, the same ideas, the same agendas, we

are kindred spirits. We feel very much the peer support in the

complexity of understanding families today. It's hard, it's hard

because it's difficult and it's hard because we now have the

data, the evidence that allows us to observe to understand

and to turn that knowledge and understanding into impact for

individuals and families. So what I'm going to do today is

share with you a little bit about what's happening in Canada

with respect to families, the way in which we're looking at

families, the way in which we're attempting to understand.

The Vanier Institute was founded more than 50 years ago and

it's our vision that we want to create a country where families

engage and thrive in a caring and compassionate society,

where we have robust and prosperous economy, in an

inclusive and vibrant culture in a safe, sustainable

environment. A nice way to get up in the morning and go to

work and have that as your purpose.

Now what we do at the Vanier Institute is we apply what we

refer to as the 200 year present. This is a concept from Elise

Boulding, PhD from the United States, that we engaged in the

early 80s. And the concept of the 200 year present is that for

families this little one born today was greeted by his 98 year

old great grandmother and her influence on this little person's

life will be there forever. And a hundred years from now when

MH1 NORA SPINKS KEYNOTE

this one is 98 and being introduced to their great

grandchildren, that family has a clear 200 year present.

Challenging for governments that are four years, eight years,

ten years, when families have a 200 year present. Now when

we think about families from the Vanier Institute's perspective,

just to put my comments in a little bit of context, we use a

strength based lens. So we look at what families are doing,

how it's working, what's working well in order to be able to

identify the services, the supports, the elements that are in

place that make some families thrive so that we can transfer to

those families who aren't so lucky. We also use and include

not only the perspectives of those who study, serve and

support families, but we ensure that the voices of families are

also heard. And so we collect the stories and combine those

with the stats. We want to be able to validate and verify the

findings, we also want to make sure that we're not brining too

much of our unconscious bias to our assessments and our

analysis so we want to make sure that the voices of families

are heard.

We also want to make sure that what we're working on

actually has an impact. So it's great to be able to produce

great studies and great reports and great articles but we

ultimately are here for impact. And so we use multiple metrics

and our job is then to inform and to educate. So with all of that

what we do is we try to capture what we can in a country that

is incredibly diverse. The United Nations has ranked us the

most culturally diverse country in the world and in fact in

Toronto there are now 200 languages spoken just in one city

alone. And in that we have two official languages, but the

school system now translates their materials in over a hundred

languages. So when we talk diversity and inclusion, we're

talking extensive diversity and inclusion. Now with that it gives

us this huge opportunity to look at things from fresh eyes, to

engage different perspectives. We use the concept of


diversabilities as opposed to disabilities because the dis, the

negative, is only there when the environment isn't supportive

and recognising of the various abilities that people bring to the

table. So it's part of our positive look at what we can do and

what we will be doing going forward.

Our indigenous communities are equally important to us as

they are to you. We have not had a really strong history in

supporting indigenous families. It's one of the areas that we're

putting more attention to, it's one that we feel is critically

important and one that we want to value and respect in

everything we do. So as I go on and explain to you some of

what we're doing, keep in mind that the general or the average

family is not reflected often in indigenous families. Indigenous

families are larger than most families in Canada and they're

more likely to live in rural remote or northern communities. If

they do live in urban or suburban or ex-urban communities

they tend to be one of a few, not of a many. The indigenous

families, the women tend to start having children significantly

younger and they'll have four or five or even six children by the

time they're 30, when the rest of the community is just

beginning to have children and they'll have one or two.

Housing and food security is still an issue for indigenous

families right across the country. And at the same time what

we're trying to do is to get a better understanding of how to

really leverage and understand the experience. So we've

begun a process to develop a family wellbeing index and I'm

really interested to hear from those of you in the room who are

researchers who could help, us guide us in creating this family

wellbeing index. We have a child wellbeing index and a

community wellbeing index but for the first time we're looking

at having one that's family centric and family focused.

Because the child and youth wellbeing index is wonderful but

we've recognised that our children and youth aren't free

radicals just sort of floating around the country but rather


they're anchored somewhere to an adult somewhere. And so

we want to make sure that we have a good understanding of

the progress that we are making with respect to families.

Now we have a very supportive federal government right at

the moment. Many of you are familiar with our Prime Minister

Justin Trudeau. He is a young dad, he spends a lot of time

with his children. He declares himself a feminist. He created

the first ever gender balanced cabinet in Canada. He

implemented a number of supports to create a family friendly

parliament in Canada. We had the first cabinet minister

actually give birth and nurse in the house, so it's happening up

in Canada too. All submissions that go to treasury or go to

government for consideration from all ministries and for all

proposals coming in for funding have to go through a GBA

plus analysis, gender based analysis. And when we say

gender based analysis, the plus is all of the other groups that

don't necessarily get recognised or support or understood or

included in policies, programs or practices. And very

committed to evidence based decision making. So that allows

us to engage in conversation and bring that evidence to bear

very similar to what Dr – sorry Gillespie, I knew I was going to

mess that up. I've been practising it and I knew – I wrote

down Gaspe and I knew that was wrong. I apologise.

Having a gender based view gives us an opportunity to

engage in conversation about the way in which we're going to

manage our public resources to support the health and

strength of families. So we used to have one Department of

Indigenous and Northern Affairs, and that's now been split into

three. So one doing services, one doing governance and now

a separate one doing northern affairs. We have for the first

time a minister of families, not just children and communities

but families' children. And social development not just social

services. So it's not just about delivering services and

programs but it's about developing communities, community


capacity, community potential. We have as of just a few

months ago our status of women's secretariat has become a

full ministry. Our minister of public services and procurement

has added the portfolio of accessibility creating a whole

accessibility Canada portfolio. Gender focused, budgets and

we're finally catching up to other parts of the world with the

right to request flex in our Canada labour code. So a big

move there.

There's also a great deal of acceptance and support and

inclusion of those who have gender identity and gender

expression in their lives that they want to be included. And

there is now a new LGBTQ2+ secretariat. Lesbian Gay Bi

Trans Queer questioning Two-spirited et cetera. So we refer

to the secretariat to make sure that all of what we do is

inclusive and honouring and respectful as well. You will hear

that theme throughout. And like many countries in the

developing world our population is ageing. We have more

centenarians now than ever before and it is a population that

is rich. And as a result we have a brand new fresh off the

books as of last week, a new minister of seniors, also used to

be simply a seniors secretariat. So with that in mind I just

wanted to give you a couple of visuals. When today's that

grandmother or great grandmother I talked to you about, about

the little one that was just born, when she was born, Canada's

population looked like this. Typical population pyramid, good

healthy base of children, very few living above the age of 60.

Fast forward now to the 1940s where we're experiencing a dip

because of the wars and still a little bit of a pyramid. But these

are now the grandparents of today and now the baby boom

happens and we have this great big baby bulge that continues

to have a huge impact on the way in which we design, deliver

and evaluate services and programs in the country.

Now our baby boom population is now turning 65 at a rate

of one every seven seconds. Every seven seconds another


boomer turns 65. And so that changes the landscape ever so

slightly and we now no longer have a population pyramid but

more a population Christmas tree. So we have the boomer

bulge and then we have a little bit of a dip with the quiet where

we're starting to see families reduced from four and five

children to one and two children and then the little millennial

bulge out there. And then the next dip. And you will notice the

next dip is a big dip and that's because few people are having

children and those who are, are having one or two. Now

what's interesting when you think about this is that you've got

those great grandparents and now those boomers who are

becoming grandparents, and then you have this little millennial

bulge that's combined has big voice in the country. And it's

almost a perfect storm forming for the conversations that we

want to have around families and the complexity families and

the diversity of families. Simple things like early learning and

childcare. Even a generation ago back when the boomers

were trying to get access to early learning and childcare as the

women were starting to return to the paid labour force in big

numbers, childcare basically meant one single mother with two

children in childcare. So for every two children there was one

possible vote for childcare. Now that little one I showed you

the picture of has two great grandmothers, has four

grandparents, has two step-grandparents, has two parents

plus two uncles who are married and decided that they're not

going to have any children but they're living vicariously

through their nieces and nephews, all wanting the best for that

little one that you saw in the picture a few minutes ago. So

now there is a minimum of six, eight, ten votes for every one

space of childcare. It's changed the conversation.

Seniors have a lot of time and energy, they vote. And so

when they start talking about and you hear this now in coffee

shops, "My grandson just stated a new childcare program and

you know what they're using this philosophy and they're using


this kind of programming. They have really good stroller

parking and I go over and volunteer three mornings a week."

It changes the conversation and the positioning of what we

mean about early learning childcare and allows us the

opportunity of engaging those who aren't just biological

parents in the nurturing and raising and optimising healthy

child development as we were talking about just a few minutes

ago.

Now our government has used the term scaffolding in the

past as well, and what they've begun to do is to stop talking

about safety nets because a net in and of itself by virtue of it

being a net there are holes that people and individuals and

things can fall through. And what they're shifting to is how can

we create a trampoline that when people fall they'll actually

bounce back to where they were and even better than they

were before. So we're now talking about investing in studying

and learning for example about post traumatic growth not just

post traumatic stress disorder. Because there are some

families and we saw a very recent example of this with those

young boys in Thailand, some come out of trauma with

growth. How do we do that, because there will always be

trauma in our communities, how do we make the most of that.

How do we turn that negative into as much of a positive as we

possibly can. So taking for example back to our indigenous

communities where the residential school experience and the

trauma associated with that has transferred generation to

generation down to the children of today, if we can turn that

trauma into some kind of growth and make it better for the

next generation, then we're going to be in a much better space

going forward.

Now one of the things that we did in preparation for our last

conference in 2015 which in Canada was the first time a

Families in Canada conference was held since 1965, so every

two years is admirable and we are now trying to do that


ourselves. But one of the things we did is we wanted to bring

those voices of families across Canada to the conference

table, those that weren't able to participate in person. And we

wanted to get the voices that weren't always heard. And so

we brought together a number of consultations just as we'd

heard are happening around here, and one of the things we

asked people to do at the start of every one of these

gatherings, whether it was with seniors and elders, faith

leaders, families new to Canada, refugees, teenagers,

kindergarten kids, university students, engineering students,

social work students, teachers, classrooms, accountants,

lawyers, family lawyers. We asked them the same question.

We asked them to complete the phrase, "Family is" with one

word. I want you to just take a minute and come up with one

word. Now we allowed them to come up with three total

submissions, so family is one, family is two and family is three

but you could only use one word. And what we wanted to do

was we wanted to capture the differences, the unique

perspectives from this massively diverse country so that we

could identify what was unique about each of these

perspectives when it came to family because it's a word that

we use all the time. And so without getting into over

complications of defining it, we just wanted to know how

people thought when they used that word. So anybody want

to just shoot out one of their words, "Family is". Evolution,

love, create, nurture, connection, attachment, foundation. We

also asked people, "Military families are" and I'll come back to

that in a minute.

So "Family is" in one word. Then what we did is we put all

of the answers for each group in a word cloud so we could at a

glance get a sense of what it was. And so these word clouds

were formed and you can now tell from the little words more

about the group than the big words. So the little words, words

like family is annoying, family is frustrating, family is


dysfunctional, that mostly came from adolescents, from family

study students, from computer science students. So we got a

pretty good sense of how adolescents felt, but still the biggest

were love, support, care, trust, even with a little dysfunction

thrown in there. Comforting, unity, support, legacy, these are

kinds of words that came up with seniors. We then went to

service providers, they were the only ones – this was actually

benefits administrators in corporate Canada, and they were

the only ones that came up with spouse and children,

dependents. But they also came up with foundation, support,

inclusive and unconditional. And we went to the communities

who were new to Canada and they came up with things like

sharing and belonging and contentment. When we went to

lawyers, family law, so we thought well okay at least people

who work with people who are divorcing every day might have

a slightly different perspective. But no they came up with the

same thing, love, care, support.

And so what we were able to do when we started talking to

people about what family is to them, similar to the video that

you just saw that Ace did asking children about family, is that

it's not about a thing, it's not about a static entity, it's not about

a structure. It's about feelings, it's about connections, it's

about being human. And so when we put each one aside and

we made posters of these, we realised that there is way more

similarity than there is difference, and there is way more about

what family is and means to people than there is different. So

you can put all the diversity and all the diverse situations and

all the different perspectives and the different experiences, low

income, high income, those who experience violence, families

affected by incarceration, military, veteran families. And you

roll them all up and it's pretty clear. The more the word comes

up the larger the word is in the word cloud. So that gives us a

foundational framework for then engaging in conversation.

And so what we did was we asked people to complete the


phrase, "Wouldn't it be great if" and they could use as many

words as they wanted. Wouldn't it be great if, and that

became the foundation of the conversations that went forward

because the next step is wouldn't it be great if all three year

olds had a story read to them at least once a day. Then we

could say what would that take. That would mean there would

need to be a book in every class – or in every home, at least

one. And so then it became a program to make sure that

every kid who's born in a hospital leaves the hospital with at

least one book. So when you start with the wouldn't it be great

if, instead of looking at problems in search of solutions that

can be hard and onerous, or everything being framed in a

problem and then the problems have to be bigger to compete

for the other problems for the resources that are available, it

starts to become energy producing instead of energy draining

when you have these conversations. So it gave us the

opportunity to explore what's going on in the country and how

we're managing.

So as I mentioned earlier we have the child and wellbeing

index that the UNICEF Canada is working on that will

eventually spread around the world, it's an in depth

enhancement of the existing one. We're hoping as the first

sort of beta test of the new index that eventually we'll be able

to do comparisons. We use Australia as a comparator on a

regular basis, you're very much like us in a whole lot of ways.

And the one unique difference is that in Canada the vast

majority of our population lives within a 200 kilometre distance

from the US border. So you don't have that same kind of

influence that we have with a country that's literally ten times

the size of us. So we sort of try to not get caught in those

comparisons but instead leap over and look at what you guys

are up to. Education remains critically important. We know

it's important for families, we know it's important for children

and we know it's important for society and economy.


Now adulthood in Canada is not that different than it is

here. We have this new emerging pre adulthood as my

daughter use to refer to it as, pre adults, like you we counted

actual full achievement into adulthood as completing your

education, moving away from your parents permanently,

completing your education, forming a relationship and starting

to have children. That used to be typically what adulthood

looked like. Now we have this pre adulthood where you might

leave home and then come back again and what we know in

Canada is about 60 per cent of the 20-somethings will leave

home and come back or never leave and stay. And then

those who leave and come back, about a third of those who

come back come back bringing somebody else with them. We

used to think that this phenomena would shift once those two

who returned started to have children, but we're finding in fact

no they're staying. And so it's changing the dynamic of

adulthood. It's also making very complex the whole question

of family law because it used to be fairly simple when a couple

separated and divorced, you brought into the relationship a

certain set of assets and then you could divide them easily.

But now when you're living in dad's house or mum's basement

or they're paying rent in your house, it starts to get really

complicated. So adulthood in Canada is pretty much the

same. Our coupling and partnering in Canada is pretty much

the same as elsewhere. Parenthood is increasing focus

because we're seeing more diverse combinations of families

and in fact we recently had a court ruling, two lawyers who

partitioned the court to have parentage granted. One of the

women had adopted a child, she was single, she adopted a

child that had multiple disabilities and her close friend who

lived in the same building that she did was her support. They

were not in an intimate relationship, they were not partners in

any other way other than parenting. And so the courts granted

the co-mamas full status parenting of this little boy.


Now I did zip past one phenomena here and recently in the

Provence of Newfoundland, courts have decided that three

adults can be considered a family and have equal rights and

responsibilities and be three on a birth certificate. In British

Colombia now you can have up to five names on a birth

certificate, they all don't have parenting status but they can all

be on a birth certificate. The egg donor, the sperm donor, the

surrogate and the adoptive parent 1 and parent 2. So

parenting and coupling in Canada or partnering in Canada is

like it's happening in the rest of the world. Now fatherhood.

Fatherhood is something that we've been studying for a long

time and fatherhood is something that we really need to

understand. We've focused a lot on how mothers in the paid

labour force have changed families in family dynamics but

fathers in Canada have probably changed more and have had

a bigger impact on the changes in families by virtue of the fact

that they are now more actively engaged in household

management and parenting than ever before. So when I

started my work looking at families and talking to fathers, men

would refer to, "My wife is expecting". Fairly traditional.

Before that it was, "My wife is in the family way", "My wife is

expecting" but it was basically her. And then it became

common in the 1990s to say, "We are pregnant" and that

became part of the language that emerged into the 2000s and

very recently. But I was with a group of young lawyers a little

while ago and this young man came in and he was looking

pretty haggard and pretty tired and somebody said, 'Hey

buddy what happened to you?" He says, "Oh we delivered a

bouncing baby boy three days previous". So they're much

more engaged, they go to most of the prenatal visits now. It

used to be maybe the first one and maybe the last one, now

they go to all of them. Fathers now in Canada actually buy

more groceries in Canada than mothers do now. And we see

that with dads and in fact the grocery industry is adapting to


that by changing the way in which they design their grocery

stores. So the way the checkout impulse buy is now

recognising that dads are there. They're trying to understand

how men and women buy groceries differently. Women have

a list of all their dairy and all their fruits and vegetables and all

their condiments and all their meats and dairy in sections.

Dads have menus, tacos, breakfast, and they go to the

grocery store and manoeuvre and manage very, very

differently. And so now in Canada the taco sauce is with the

shells is with the hamburger meat all in one place. And

women go into the grocery store and see a rack of bananas

beside the cereal aisle and are confused and then go cool.

The dads think that's a pretty good idea. So that's applying

the learnings from the evidence to practical every day

situations.

Now we have a brand new paternity leave that's coming to

fathers in Canada, five weeks dedicated non-transferable. We

also have an extended parental leave. So it used to be 35

weeks, so 17 weeks maternity, 35 weeks parental shared

between mum and dad and now the five weeks for dads

dedicated. Dads can do it concurrently or sequentially. And

now you can extend that same amount of money over 18

months instead of over 12 if that works out better for you and

our family, because of the high cost of childcare for some

families that works out quite well, for others not so much

depending on their career. A brand new caregiving benefit

that's been introduced, so if dads are providing care they can

access some income replacement as well. We have a new

and emerging understanding, we've had it on the books for a

while, duty to accommodate due to family status, employers

historically applied that to mothers, mothers of young children

or mothers with children with disabilities. Now it's being

applied to mothers and fathers, to elder care as well as to

childcare and again right to request flex.


Now mothers in Canada we've been talking about for a very

long time and they now have a number of things. They have

the way our income replacement or special benefit, maternity

benefits work, there used to be a two week wait period before

the benefits actually began. And when parental leave came

in, the dads started to take their share of parental leave and

they were told they had a two week wait period and the dads

went, "No that's not right, I need benefits when I start

benefits". And so they eliminated the two week wait period for

dads, and eventually reduced the wait period for mums from

two to one but we still have a one week wait period for mums.

So oftentimes the employers will top that up and pay that one

week wait period but it messes up with your taxes and some

people love it, some people say just get rid of the one week

wait period, you need benefits when you need them. That's

probably the next discussion that's ongoing in Ottawa right at

the moment.

In Canada when we talk about parenting we talk about

those where there's a lead parent. That might be somebody

who stays home, it might be somebody who takes primary

responsibility, primary decision making. It might be for families

where one parent is working in the oil sands in northern

Alberta and living on the east coast of the country and

commuting for a five hour flight every couple of weeks. So a

lead parent or co-parents where they're both the same or solo

parents where they make separate decisions on their own and

don't consult or inform anybody else. The solo parenting is

dropping in Canada. We haven't seen much of an increase

since the wartime in the number of sole support parents.

During pre-war it was mostly the single parents were dads

because the mums were dying in childbirth. After the war it

was mums because their husbands had died in war. And now

it's more as a result of either a separation, divorce or a never

married situation. Teen pregnancies significantly dropped


because of the availability and accessibility of birth control and

better education of young people. That massive population

growth that we're having in those who are reaching the age of

100 gives us this huge opportunity to understand, a huge

resource for us to tap if we figure out how to do that. We now

think about seniors up to about age 80, 85 and then elders

beyond that because we couldn't - you know lumping

everybody from 60 on up was pretty hard when it came to

things like programs and services and needs and rolls. But it

gives us this access to this wisdom of elders. It gives us

access to knowledge, to experiences. It gives us human

resources that we can leverage and seniors helping seniors or

seniors helping families is becoming recognised at all levels

and finding ways to integrate that into our planning and our

processes.

One of the things that we used to think of as seniors is

seniors were dependent, seniors were frail, seniors were

needy, seniors were alone and isolated. Well some seniors

are and most of us will get to that point at some time in our

lives but it doesn't mean that the minute you turn 65 that that's

going to happen to all of us and that that's going to be our

destiny for the future 25, 30 years beyond. So what we're now

seeing is how do we use language that's respectful and

honouring of our elders, that's respectful and honouring of the

diversity of their lives, their experiences, their knowledge. And

supports the families who provide the care, provide the

guidance, provide the social supports and the linkages. It's a

huge resource because now children know their grandparents

and grandparents more than ever before. Whether they are

living in the same house or living in the same community, the

same province or somewhere else in the world, we know that

grandparents in Canada are one of the fastest growing new

users of Facebook, and Instagram and they're doing so, the

primary motivation based on the conversations we have with


them is that they are using technology and Facebook in order

to connect with their children and their grandchildren.

The other day I was at a seniors group and somebody's

phone rang and it was facetime, one of the grandchildren had

facetimed one of the seniors that were in the program. We

were there to play bingo, I was there with my mother-in-law

who's 98 and it was bingo day. And I was the youngest in the

room by probably 35 years or so but they decided to invite me

to play bingo with them. And I thought great, golden

opportunity, I'll engage them all in conversation, I'll get more

data, I'll get more information. And they're deciding amongst

themselves how many bingo cards they think I can handle.

And so they'd come to the conclusion that I can handle two.

So they set me all up and tell me the rules and how the game

plays and I'm starting to get anxious because I haven't done

this in a very, very long time and now I'm wondering will I ever

even get a word in edgewise in my research here. And they

start calling the numbers and the woman next to me who has

eight cards taps me on the shoulder and says, "I need to go, I

forgot something, can you watch my cards?" So the entire

table goes "Uh" as she puts her little moby scooter in reverse

and goes, "brb". "You're 90 years old, brb, that's msn

language, that's like be right back. Like how do you guys

know this?" "Oh we text all the time. We're on Facebook,

we'll friend you". Huge resource if we figure out how to tap

that.

Our indigenous grandparents are hugely important to the

indigenous community. Unfortunately they're also the ones

who are likely to have experienced the traumas of residential

schools. So we're trying to figure out how to support them in

their trauma recovery so that they can be good parents and

good grandparents for the next generation. Caregiving is a

normal experience, those who have those relationships with

those grandparents and great grandparents, historically we've


had those kinds of multi-generational relationships. But now

you could be well into your 30s or even your 40s and still have

a long deep relationship with your grandparents. That's huge.

And you still may have relationships into your teens with your

great grandparents. And so what we're seeing is that those

grandparents who provided care to the little ones are now

being cared for by those same kids. Now as teens, as young

adults, and young carers are becoming a priority in the

country.

Grandparenthood in Canada is alive and well. Many of

those who turn 65 at a rate of one every seven seconds do

have little ones in their lives. If they don't live close by they

are using technology to do that. They're very active. Many of

them are living in the same households as their children, both

receiving care and giving care. A third of first time

grandparents are in the paid labour force when they become

grandparents for the first time. So now we're starting to hear

rumbling, what about grandparent leave. Can I share in the

parental leave. How can I be involved in, what kind of leave

do I get when my grandchildren are born. Can I travel, will

that count as part of my holiday pay or will that count as part of

my family care programming. So workplaces are now looking

at grandparents and grandparent leave.

We also have skip generations, so these are families who

the grandparents are the primary providers where parents

aren't involved and that might be as a result of a mental

illness, untreated or treated, and parents are no longer

available. They're not available because of incarceration or

because they're now living somewhere else in the world. We

haven't figured out how to support these parents/grandparents

well, they don't feel welcome in schools, they don't feel

welcome in the community programs, they're not feeling

necessarily appreciated, so we've got to figure out how to

support them better.


So we've come through the life course and now we get into

divorce or uncoupling or unpartnering. We used to use the

term "uncoupling" and somebody said that sounds too much

like train cars, so we're now trying unpartnering. We have a

new Divorce Act that's coming into play, sort of bringing us up

to what some of you already have here in this country. The

language change, we're no longer having custodian or

custodial parents, we're having parents. You're more likely in

Canada to separate or divorce through mediation instead of

litigation. Much more likely to separate amicably and much

more likely to be actively involved together as co-parents

going forward.

Which leads us to the next step which is step families and

we do have a large number of step families which also leads

us to those who don't have families and are foster families.

Statistics Canada for the first time counted foster families in

2011. We didn't even know how many there were until 2011.

Unfortunately disproportionately indigenous. But that leads us

to really complicated households and most of our stats are

based on households, not on families as many of yours are.

So we now have new data on those families who are living

together apart, so they've separated and divorced but they're

still living in the same household because they're co-

parenting. Or they're living apart but they're together because

they're in an intimate relationship but they're maintaining two

separate households because of geography, because they live

far away, they might be students and they're living in two

different cities. They might be living on the east coast and

working in the north. They might just have custodial or care

parenting responsibilities from another relationship and it's just

easier to keep the houses separate. So we now have new

data on this. So our statistics bureau Statistics Canada is

trying to figure out how to make sense of all of this and with

the new access to administrative data we're able to get this


more regularly, annually, and not have to wait for census

which means our family wellbeing index is going to be exciting.

And for those of you who are number geeks in the room you

know how exciting this can be.

So we also have more because of the diversity, more

interfaith and more interracial relationships than any other

country. We have multigenerational households because of

all the migration and immigration that occurs, which again

adds complexity to things like family law. But it also means

that for the first time our families wealth and net worth are

concentrating. And part of that is because our family finances

are becoming more intertwined. So grandma maybe paying

for the childcare or paying for the recreation services and so

how do we detangle that from the data when it comes to family

finances. We also know that oftentimes families are paying for

services for their seniors or seniors are paying rent or giving

living legacy funds, so not waiting until they die and leaving an

inheritance for their children, but having these living legacies

that they transfer their wealth to their children or their

grandchildren.

And in fact those at the tip top of the pyramid that I showed

you earlier, the tip top of the Christmas tree, those folks are

leaving their wealth not to their children, the boomers, they got

all they need, they don't need anymore. It's going down to the

grandchildren. So it's going down to the 30 year olds who are

struggling trying to get into the housing market. We have no

idea what that’s going to do to their labour force attachment,

their earning potential. We do know that financial literacy will

be critically important but we know that there's about $750b of

assets that's going to change generational hands in a decade.

That's huge and we have no idea what that's going to do to the

economy, to society. We do know that it is going to increase

the gap between those who have and those who don't

because if you've got a grandmother who leaves you her


million dollar home in downtown Toronto, even if you were low

income or middle income, you're going to go up. If your

grandmother leaves with a $5,000 debt because she's been a

renter and she has no assets of her own, then it's going to be

harder for you to catch up in a housing market and the real

estate market that we have in our country.

So we have to figure out how do we detangle in order to

understand the cost of living, the cost of raising children and

what kind of investments families are making in those early

years and those early opportunities to optimise healthy child

development. Families are busy. Work and family is still

critically important and I thought I would just take you through

a quick little exercise to demonstrate how crazy our lives have

been but this is a human graphing exercise. So it requires you

to stand up, so if you could just put your papers on your chair

and just stand up with me for a minute. Take the opportunity

to stretch a little bit. I was once on a panel with this CEO of

Steelcase that made chairs for this kind of event and I said,

"Can we not make chairs that are more comfortable for

conferences?" And he said, "No, no, no dear, these are

designed for stacking". Okay so stretch. Raise your right

hand if you currently have any children in your life, this could

be your own children, grandchildren, a niece and nephew, any

child whatsoever in your life. If any of those children are under

the age of six, between the ages of 13 and 19 currently away

at university or college or recently moved back home, make

that arm go up and down, the rest of you keep them up high.

If you have anybody in your life over the age of 55 this could

be a parent, a grandparent, a spouse, a partner, raise your

other arm. If anyone of those persons over the age of 55 lives

more than 10 kilometres away from you, recently hospitalised,

diagnosed with illness, chronic illness, disability, make that

arm go up and down. If you've seen any change in your work

environment in the last year raise your right leg. New projects,


new programs, new priorities, if you support anybody who's

experiencing any change in their work environment, make that

leg go up and down. If you're involved in your community,

participating, taking other courses, raise your other leg. And if

at any time in the last 24 hours you wished that there was

more than 24 hours in a day, just give me neck roll. Thanks

have a seat.

Now I share this with you in part because I want to make

sure that you're absorbing the last few remarks here as we go

into questions and into break. But if I asked that series of

questions five years ago or five years from now you may

respond very differently. But the energy that's in that room, it's

not all negative. It can be something that's extraordinary. If

we find a way to harness that work and life, if we find a way to

support these families, to energise them, and harness that

energy, leverage that experience, then society, economy will

prosper.

So a couple of families that I do want to pay attention to are

military and veteran families. We have a new program of

interprovincial. Every time you got posted from one province

to the other you had to get a new drivers licence, new health

card, new everything. Well now we are going to get

interprovincial support. But for the first time in history our

defence plan, the defence strategy for the country includes

family. Now when I started at the Vanier Institute in 2011, it's

not that long ago, military families were still stuck under

furniture and effects. And so we've come a long way in a very

short period of time from families being referred to as if the

military wanted you to have one they would have issued one,

to now as a integral part of the defence strategy. So we're

waiting for that to become public.

Our families living with violence or the threat of violence.

We do have families that are either experienced in or with

violence. Intimate partner violence, violence of property. We


want to make sure that we understand that well. There is a

new housing strategy in Canada that has very special

supports for those who are fleeing violence, who need

protection, who need support. But also to provide

opportunities to try to relieve some of the stress that might

result in somebody using violence instead of using problem

solving or self regulation. So we are learning from what's

happening on other parts of the world and will continue to

apply that throughout.

Now poverty reduction is an issue that we're also looking at

in our country as are you. And one of the things that we're

doing is historical, we've talked about low income, high income

and everybody is sort of on an up and down. And finding the

poverty line and defining what the poverty line is and either

you're above it or below it. And now we're saying let's look at

it more as a continuum. Let's look at a continuum that you

slide up and down on from time to time and hopefully if we

provide the right education, resources, supports, assistance,

guidance, we can slide up and not slide back much. So we

have those that have no resources whatsoever and that we

refer to as the deprivation phase where it's low hope,

disadvantage, there's some damage that can be done to

children in this environment, low health, high illness rates, low

ability to recover from illness or injury. And then the scarcity

stage where there are limited resources where you might have

access to government supports, your hope is still a little but at

least it's there because at least you can feed and shelter and

clothe your children. And then there's those that have

predictable resources that we now refer to those that have

adequacy. Might fall into the middle class family sort of

definition of the past. They are hopeful. They may slide into

scarcity as a result of divorce or incarceration or something or

death in the family. And they might slide into scarcity but if not

they may move into abundance or actually maybe so lucky as


to move into a state of surplus where there's very low risk and

there's lots to share. More about this if you're interested.

A couple of things and then I'm going to break for questions

and then I'll close off. Increasingly in Canada we have this

approach of housing first. So if we can invest in housing, and

we have a new housing strategy, we can invest in housing

then we can get people the services that they need. Whether

it's access to the Canada child benefit which will put up to

$9,000 a year into the bank account of a single mother.

Canada child benefit is only accessible if you've paid taxes

which is much easier if you have a home. And so housing

first. If you're living with addictions or you're living in an

environment where there is violence or threat of violence, in

order to get treatment or to get care or to get support, housing

first. For those young people who are struggling and not able

to find steady employment, not able to continue their

education, housing first. So it's a new approach.

The other is transportation and I was thrilled to learn about

your inner city hop on hop off transit. We've been trying to

figure out how best to do that in Canada and there was a

number of experiments where public transportation was made

free for a period of time. And people who were on the high

risk, low resource end of the continuum were able to use it

free without stigma. And a couple of unintended

consequences occurred. They started eating better, they

started going to more doctors' appointments, they started

going to more job interviews. They started to explore their

city, they started to become engaged in the community, they

started participating in cultural events that were free in their

communities. So huge benefits for very little cost because the

trains were running anyway. So just put a butt on a seat that

was otherwise empty and huge benefits. So housing first and

transportation big.

And food security is something that we're working on in


Canada to make sure that people have the nutrition that they

need but not necessarily have to rely on food banks to do so.

So community gardens, in home gardening, hydroponics, all

kinds of support being done in the food security area. Now

before I begin to close off, I just wanted to pause for a minute

and see if anybody had any burning questions. I'm going to

be here for the rest of the conference and I'm going to be on

the closing panel so lots of time if you want to engage in

conversation or drill a little bit deeper or if you have thoughts

and ideas about a family wellbeing index would love to talk

with you some more. Any burning questions, anything that

you'd like to put on the table, we do have mics floating around.

Anybody? Yes sir, do we have a mic? Do you want to just

stand up and introduce yourself, stand up, there's a mic on its

way. Oprah. There we go. Sir.

MR FASHER: Thank you very much. I wasn't prepared for the ceremony.

Michael Fasher, I'm a GP in Western Sydney. How well do

you pay your early childhood educators?

MS SPINKS: Not well enough yet. The early childhood educators – well the

early learning and childcare system is managed and falls with

the responsibility of our provincial government. But recently

the federal government has increased funding substantially to

the provinces and has agreements, service agreements

between each province and territory with the federal

government. So an increase in funds are happening. Every

province is doing something a little bit different with the funds

that they have. The salaries are critically important for

recruitment, for retention, for recognition, for career

advancement, for career building. So we know that it's not just

salary but it's benefits, it's job security, it's reasonable working

conditions, it's reasonable hours. It's the ability to have

pensions and to plan a career. So each province is looking at

that differently but its childhood human resources is a huge

issue. The government has set aside some funds to increase


the number of spaces, 100,000 spaces. It's a lot of spaces

because you need a lot of bodies to fill those spaces. So one

of the things that some of the provinces are doing is looking at

those who have left the field to see how we can get them back

in the field and those who are in the field or graduating from

the field, how do you keep them. And salary is a big part of

that. Now in provinces like Ontario where there is massive

diversity and massive demand, the Ontario Government a few

years ago introduced full day kindergarten for kids aged four

and every one of those classrooms has an early childhood

educator in it. And so it pulled benefits, data, appreciation,

unions, and pulled a lot of really good people out of the

centres and out of homecare and into the school system. So

now we have to sort of offset that as well in some provinces.

Huge issue, building the self esteem of the profession, building

the respect, self respect and respect from others is also

critically important. And there's a really good report that you

can access from our site that does a whole analysis of

childcare, the costs and the benefits and who's being paid

what in each province relative to minimum wage and relative

to other like nurses and other healthcare professionals that are

sort of similar education status. Any other burning questions?

Sir. Go ahead, stand up. Mic is on its way.

MR MASARDO: Thanks, Alex Masardo, University of Gloucestershire in the

UK.

MS SPINKS: Welcome.

MR MASARDO: Thanks Nora. I was going to ask a quick question about the

family welfare – wellbeing index which is very exciting and I

hope to catch up and talk to you about it later today. Given

the complexity of families that you've so clearly articulated in

your talk, I just wondered what the baseline might be for that.

So its methodological more than anything else. So who is

family, what - is it – what's your starting point, is it the child, is

it the senior, the great grandparent, the single person with a


cat or the couple with no children.

MS SPINKS: Well we would consider the woman with the cat and the two

people without children also a family and in fact we're seeing a

shift in the language where people are now saying we're

starting to have children as opposed to we're starting a family.

Because so many are not choosing. From a methodological

perspective, I would love to have that conversation with you

and I can share with you what we're doing in terms of gleaning

data from the administrative data, the census data, the general

social surveys, some academic research, some focus groups.

We've got pretty much the domains in place based on the

child and wellbeing index but we're still working on some of

the indicators and the reliability of the indicators and testing a

number of questions. We've been working with Statistics

Canada on things like the difference between sex and gender

and in the last census in 2016 in order to get at some of the

perplexities of family, we did make it possible to answer male,

female, other. And we got 27 different others that were

statistically relevant. So now we've got to figure out what do

we do with that and how do we blend that into some of the

questions about family and relationships and dependents and

inter-dependents and co-dependents and so yeah, love to talk

to you some more about that. And anybody want to be a part

of that we'll have lunch, yep.

QUESTION: I just wanted to find out a little bit more about the housing first

strategy 'cause having a grandchild who lives in Vancouver

you've got a huge problem and none of the policy things seem

to be making a big difference. So I'm just wondering

particularly how you're preserving the you know housing for

very vulnerable families.

MS SPINKS: Housing in our big cities is very expensive and it's very difficult

to either find rental accommodation or get into the real estate

market without help from family. It is a huge issue. For those

that are experiencing housing insecurity and those who are


relying on low income housing or on shelters it's ever more

complicated. And so part of the national housing strategy that

was released a few months ago is trying to tackle all of that

and trying to make it possible for families who want to stay in

urban centres to be able to do that. And for those who want to

move out to urban or ex-urban or even rural that there's

housing options that are much more flexible, in partnership

with the municipalities that set the bylaws and decides who

can live with who and where the funding goes in terms of

whether it's a high rise, high cost condo, or whether it's mixed

housing and making it more available to others. So we could

do lots of conversation over the next couple of days but I do

want to keep on track and I do want to keep on schedule so

thank you so much, I'll grab your question and then I'll answer

it in my closing remarks.. Go ahead. Anybody over here? I

thought there was somebody. One here.

MS SANCHEZ: Ms Sanchez from Human HQ. Have you got any initiatives for

parent education which is different than childbirth education

before the baby arrives. Like a lot of the parent education

here focuses on fixing the problems but what about as

Dr Gillespie was talking about, prevention. We know that's

key so what's happening with that?

MS SPINKS: Probably one of the most interesting from my perspective is

some of the parenting ed that's happening in the workplace.

So lunch and learns and parenting networks and parenting

affinity groups in workplaces because that's where we can

capture them. And if you get new and expectant parent

groups in the workplace and start giving them not what they're

going to get at their pre-natal classes or their you know

hospital prep or their midwifery services, but how do you not

just be good parents and optimise healthy child development,

but also how do you manage work and family and how do you

care for yourself in order for you to be a good parent and a

good employee. So there's some really interesting models of


that that I'd be happy to share with you.

So I just want to close with so what does it really take to

shape a community or a culture that embraces families, that

recognises the complexity of life and living. It's definitely

leadership. It's also evidence based decision making but also

evidence informed and evidence inspired action, because not

everything is able to look in the rear view mirror. Sometimes

we've got to take what we can see in the back to leap forward.

Which takes us to innovation and creativity. It takes

commitment to equity and fairness, it does take courage, it

does take some guts to stand up and say, "Hey maybe the

way we've been doing it is not so great". I can remember

listening to a child development specialist and he was talking

about how we used to believe that humans were born

aggressive and humans were naturally part of the animal

kingdom and had this innate capability. And then after years

and years and years of research what they discovered was

maybe in fact it wasn't innate in human beings but in fact

maybe it was just ten million years of really bad parenting.

And so we now know better and we can apply self

regulation and knowledge of child development and healthy

brain development, we can do this. But it requires

collaboration and partnership and it includes a desire to

continuously learn. And I think the Australian Institute for

Family Studies is an extraordinary place to continually learn.

This conference is a great place to continually learn. We have

to keep our minds open and our hearts clear, we need to keep

our head in the clouds and our feet on the ground. We need

to be patient and listen, we need to enquire, we need to be

curious. We need to be aware of our unconscious bias, we

need to acknowledge that that unconscious bias exists. And I

have one minute left and I'm going to do a quick exercise with

you to demonstrate this power of unconscious bias. Matt,

could you just click the screen off for me for a minute. I want


you to think white and I want you to repeat the word after me

and then I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to let

your brain just blah out the answer okay. So repeat after me

white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white, white,

white, what do cows drink? Milk. Yeah, cows don't drink milk,

we drink milk, cows produce milk because our brains

associate pictures first. So pictures and images and thoughts

are critically important. One more. This time I'm going to ask

you to say the word "top", t-o-p, top of the box, top of the lid,

top of the mountain, top, top, top. You with me. Top, top, top,

top, top, top, top, top, top. What do you do at a green light?

Matt can I have that back up.

Our brains are really important that we bring to this

discussion. We bring our hearts because we're all part of

families, good, bad, ugly, horrible, dangerous. Most of us

have families that we are born into that love us, that struggle

through, that we form on our own, that we establish in

adulthood, that are our everything. Family is love, care and

support. And if we in fact embrace that, and acknowledge the

unconscious bias, the white, white milk that we bring to the

conversations, the confusion that we sometimes bring

between what we’ve known and what we want to understand,

and remember that when we do this, that it's not the strongest

species that shall survive but that which has the greatest

capacity to adapt. And as researchers, as service providers,

as policy makers, if we can take that evidence, if we can take

that experience, if we can grab that enthusiasm and the

potential that's out there, we will be amazing and families will

thrive. So thank you so very much, it's been an honour to be

here today, I really do appreciate it and look forward to further

conversations with you over the next couple of days.

WEBINAR CONCLUDED



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