text: Recovery is a complex thing. It goes deeper than vaccines and antivirals, further than containing SARS-CoV-2. It encapsulates the economy, human rights, housing, social resources, health care, what we demand from our governments, and what we'll no longer tolerate. Past pandemics spurred revolution and religion, squashed civilizations, and forked the course of history again and again and again. This pandemic is equally unlikely to fade quietly, returning the planet to 2019 in a great time-travel machine. Certainly, many people hope that it doesn't. Paulette Senior, the president and CEO of the Canadian Women's Foundation, is one of them. Of course, like all of us, she wants COVID-19 to stop. But as 2020 raged on, she also began to see the pandemic's possibility as a Great Reset. Watching how quickly society pivoted, all over the world, gave her hope. What she saw is that when all of our lives are at risk, humanity is capable of doing better. When it matters—and so many things still matter, from stopping domestic violence to fighting anti-Black racism to creating income equality—we can change. "All the old excuses of how difficult it would be to do this and that went out the window," said Senior. "And instead we could let in some fresh air."
  
  Senior has spent much of her life tackling systemic barriers, particularly for women and girls. She's worked in social services, focusing on Toronto's most underserved neighbourhoods. She's managed shelters and employment programs and was the CEO of YWCA Canada for more than a decade. Her experiences when she was a young child as a newcomer from Jamaica to Canada also exposed her to her own set of systemic barriers. Which is to say, she has spent more than thirty years pushing for change and then the pandemic reaffirmed to her that such change can happen. We can transform in a heartbeat. It isn't about what's possible or impossible any longer, she told me. It's about: What kind of world are we committed to building? And, what kind of choices are we making when it comes to those whom the pandemic has most disastrously affected? If the pandemic has shown us that everything can come undone in an instant, it's also shown us that everything can be remade. We've seen unprecedented death and struggle, but we've also seen unprecedented kindness, leadership, support, and breathtaking innovation. We've seen that we're not stuck with what we have. So when we rebuild, argued Senior, why not rebuild something better—something that is in the best interest of all of us, and not just some? She has many ideas about what that could include: universal child care; inclusive, robust education that tells history from a more truthful perspective; a policing system that protects everybody and doesn't cost billions; committed, non-divisive politicians; "When we decide that we, as human beings, are the priority," she added, "everything else will follow from that decision."
  
  Under that hopeful, adamant perspective—that we can build better—the Canadian Women's Foundation has released a series of research papers on building a better normal. Other women's organizations have joined them in their vision for a new Canada. For example, Senior's former organization, YWCA Canada, and the Institute for Gender and the Economy at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management jointly released a feminist economic recovery plan in July 2020. In it, they outlined eight "non-negotiable" steps the country should take to generate future prosperity, for everybody. Like Senior, the report's authors also saw hope in the broad range of people across Canada who, perhaps for the first time ever, realized things needed to change. To them, it looked like a necessary, and also encouraging, paradigm shift. They also recognized what many others, from PSWs to community leaders, had already stressed: COVID-19 alone isn't what broke us. "It took a pandemic for the country to see what was already broken," wrote the authors. "We cannot ignore the historical context that has created the unstable foundation for the harms we are seeing play out in this current crisis."
  
  If Canada wanted not simply to recover what's been lost but to ensure well-being for decades to come, argued the report's authors, it needed to learn from the pandemic. After all, the recession itself was unlike anything the country had ever seen before; the solution needed to be equally ground-shaking. First, the joint plan outlined, the government would need to adopt an intersectional framework. To do so, it needed an unflinching account of the pandemic's consequences across race, age, gender identity, gender expression, disability, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, and immigration status—something that, nearly a year into the pandemic, it had not yet done. Second, after it had gathered better, more equitable data, it needed to follow that data and address the root cause of systemic racism. For instance, only $305 million, or less than 1 per cent of the federal government's COVID-19 funding, went to Indigenous communities; new economic stimulus couldn't follow the same flawed path. Jointly, it needed to address things like paid sick leave, safe housing, and other social determinants of health—and it would have to listen to the affected communities to figure out how to fix them. Third, the federal government needed to recognize that care work—both paid and unpaid—is essential, and then begin treating it as such. Meaning, better pay, more support, benefits, and better conditions. Meaning, universal child care.
  
  Next up is investing in "good jobs" for people who don't traditionally have them: people of colour, trans people, the disabled. A "good job," added the authors, doesn't mean whatever stereotypical, classist thing you think it does; it means anything that is stable and provides a livable income. Fifth, the government would need to fight what's been dubbed the "shadow pandemic"—that is, the enormous rise in hate and violence, including, but definitely not limited to, domestic violence. As the recovery report noted, one in five Indigenous women told the Native Women's Association of Canada that they have experienced physical or psychological violence since the start of the pandemic. Chantel Moore, an Indigenous woman living in New Brunswick, and Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a Black-Indigenous woman living in Toronto, were killed during police wellness checks that took place during the first wave. And in June, the Vancouver Police Department said there had been a 600 per cent increase in reports of hate crimes against Asian communities. Prosperity shouldn't thrive in hate and violence, stressed the authors. Sixth, any recovery plan must also centre small businesses as well as business owners in underrepresented groups—like Alèthe Kaboré and Sarah Taher. Both of these categories represent significantly untapped economic potential. Seventh, the government must provide the infrastructure to make it all happen: housing, clean water, broadband access. The new economy won't succeed if people can't access the foundations. Lastly, wrote the authors, any decision-making must include diverse voices. "To ensure an equitable recovery," stressed the report, "we need to shift whose knowledge is valued in the conversation."
  
  It's an ambitious plan, but the women of the pandemic have already provided the blueprint. Their work has shown us the way forward—and it's exposed the unconscionable pitfalls we must avoid as we move past COVID-19. This book has never been about perfection. The women you've met have revealed astonishing strength, and they've suffered immeasurable loss. They've made their own mistakes, and they've borne the brunt of others'. But what they all have in common is that, during the worst time in contemporary society, they tried. They tried to connect us. They tried to keep us safe. They tried to look out for each other. They tried to keep us healthy. To take care of us. To create this better world that we're dreaming of now. They tried simply to keep going. As we think about how we made it through, and how we'll keep making it through, and what recovery looks like, we owe it to them to remember how their actions carried us. We owe it to them, and to each other, to try something new.