Want More Babies? Fix Parental Leave.

during my 15-year career as an HR specialist, I designed leave-management programs, like disability and parental leaves, for large Canadian companies. When it came time for me to have my first child in 2011, I knew the drill. I submitted for the maximum time—which, in days of EI past, was roughly 12 months—and socked away extra savings in advance. My second and third leaves were more complicated: I had a newborn with medical needs, plus some of my own. I decided to return to work, taking part-time career counselling gigs so I could make money and attend doctors’ appointments. Over and over again, I heard the same issues from women I knew—about parental leave and juggling responsibilities—so I thought, Why not all get together to talk? That’s how Moms at Work, Canada’s first professional association for working mothers, was born in 2017.

This country’s 15-week maternity leave was groundbreaking when it was introduced in 1971; before that, many women had to quit their jobs once they gave birth. More than 50 years later, however, parental leave is only working for Canadians who’ve enrolled in—and consistently paid into—EI at their salaried nine-to-five jobs. (Just submit one application to Service Canada and a cheque arrives within days!) For everyone else, it’s nowhere near as simple. Unless your job is unionized, you can’t rely on top-ups from your employer, which aren’t required by law. The economics are scary, too. During maternity and parental leave, Canadian parents receive EI benefits of up to 55 per cent of their salary to a maximum of just $668 per week—and it’s taxed. This is one of the least generous wage-replacement rates out of 38 OECD countries. For those who opt for an 18-month leave, the wage-replacement rate drops to 33 per cent, an arrangement I’ve heard many moms refer to as “rich people leave.” 

In 2022, the country’s birth rate dropped to a 17-year low and, in an Angus Reid poll from last October, more than half of Canadian respondents admitted they delayed having kids due to financial concerns. Understandably, young people aren’t saying, “Can’t afford rent? Can’t afford groceries? Let’s have a baby!” Rather than keep hobbling along, we have to create a more flexible, more inclusive system, one that ensures Canadians don’t have to go broke to have a family.

During the pandemic, the federal government invited parents’ advocates, unions, companies and freelancers of all kinds to attend roundtables to discuss how EI was working. Everyone agreed that it had too many restrictions. One of the biggest was this: while EI requires salaried employees to have worked 600 hours before they’re eligible for parental leave, self-employed workers have to pay into EI for a year before they can even apply for it. This can be a hugely prohibitive amount of money for gig workers, who now make up a quarter of Canada’s workforce. And not everyone draws up a 500-point plan before having a kid. 

One fix would be to remove parental leave from under the EI umbrella and make it its own special government program, like CERB. Quebec did this way back in 2006 with the launch of the Québec Parental Insurance Plan. Like EI, this new parallel program would still only require one application with proof that you filed taxes. But with this rejig, there’s no reason the typical one-year wait for freelancers’ parental leave benefits to kick in couldn’t be sped up to as little as six months. Plenty of women only find out they’re pregnant in month three, anyway.

While we’re figuring out how to pay Canadian parents more efficiently, we can at least increase how much. Factoring in the current costs of living, the ideal wage replacement would be nine months at full pay, 12 months at 75 per cent and 18 months at 60. These kinds of rates are already standard in other countries. Bulgaria, for example, has one of the world’s best leave programs. It lasts 410 days, kicks in 45 days pre-birth and pays out 90 per cent of parents’ salaries. 

In cases where children are born with special needs, wage replacements should be higher to account for costs like therapy or medication. The same goes for multiple-birth scenarios. If you have triplets, as one of my friends did, that’s three times the clothes, food and diapers. You should get three times the leave payments, too. 

Better government benefits could also encourage companies to provide top-ups, even if they’re not obligated to. In 2022, just over 55 per cent of employed women of child-bearing age in Canada had access to employer-provided maternal- or parental-leave benefits. Back in my corporate days, I often heard from bosses whose staff were receiving 30 per cent of their salary while on parental leave. Many would’ve loved to pitch in the extra 70 per cent—especially to help retain workers—but it just wasn’t financially feasible for them. Some resented the fact that they, not the government, were being backed into the role of social safety net. If government-supplied wage replacements were closer to 80 per cent, more Canadian firms would probably be keen to contribute.

Another workplace-related reform for Canada to consider is Keeping in Touch Days, which the U.K. introduced in 2006. There, employees are allowed to work up to 20 paid days during their parental leaves without losing their benefits. This legislation also allows workers to keep up with training, take important calls and earn money to keep them afloat during their leaves. A Canadian version of Keeping in Touch Days would ease financial burdens while making it much easier to remain in or integrate back into the workforce.

There are, of course, many cases where parents don’t want to take a lengthy leave, or it doesn’t make sense, money-wise, for them to split it with a partner who earns less than them. A growing number of Canadian women—30 per cent, up from 23 per cent in 1996—are now the primary breadwinners in their households. In the event they’d like to return to work early after having their baby, they should have the option of transferring a chunk of their leaves to extended family members. Last July, Sweden made that a reality, passing a law allowing parents to reallocate up to three months of their leave to grandparents. People are always screaming about how “it takes a village.” Offering paid leave to caregivers beyond birthing parents—and even the nuclear family—would be revolutionary.

It’s important to remember that many countries feel about Canada the way we feel about Sweden. I’ve worked with advocates in the U.S. who, still fighting for bodily autonomy, absolutely marvel at our government’s $30-billion, $10-a-day childcare plan. Parental leave, once our country’s great equalizer, deserves the same kind of investment. There are lots of people in my circles who don’t want kids. But for people who do, we need a plan that ensures they’re losing sleep over midnight feedings more often than mounting bills. We can’t afford not to.

Allison Venditti is the founder of Moms at Work, Canada’s first professional association for working mothers.