It’s Mat Leave Monday! Today I’m discussing maternity leave and the self-employed. For a refresher on how maternity leave works in Canada, you can read my previous posts about Canadian Maternity Leave and Maternity Leave in Quebec.
During the 2008 election campaign the Conservatives promised to extend maternity and parental benefits to the self-employed. Their website says, “Only the Harper Conservatives have agreed to do the right thing and extend maternity and paternal benefits to self-employed entrepreneurs.” (I think they meant parental instead of paternal, but whatever, you get the drift).
And so, prior to the release of the 2009 federal budget in January there were rumours that maternity and parental benefits through EI would be extended to the self-employed. Only that didn’t exactly happen. Instead, what happened was the government agreed to establish an Expert Panel to consult Canadians on how best to extend maternity and parental benefits to the self-employed. You can read the exact text of the budget online and get the (extremely limited) details for yourself.
Perhaps this is just the way that the Conservatives are fulfilling their election promise, by setting up a committee and a consultation process. But if you refer back to their own website they already had a rather detailed plan for how the self-employed would qualify for and receive maternity and parental benefits. It sort of seems like they’re dragging their feet now that the economy is bad and they’re already in deficit. Who knows? It would hardly be the first time an election promise was broken, and either way it all means the same thing, which is that no one who is self-employed is collecting maternity and parental benefits in Canada. Unless they live in Quebec and opt into the provincial system there, in which case the self-employed have been receiving maternity and parental benefits for a few years already.
At the moment, approximately one third of Canadian women who have babies are not eligible for maternity or parental benefits. However, only eleven percent of Canadian women are self-employed, so I would guess that means that around 20% of new mothers are unemployed or do not work enough to qualify for EI. Remember that you need 600 insurable hours over 52 weeks, so you have to work an average of 12 hours per week to collect benefits. Experts are always quick to point out that many part-time and seasonal workers are women with young children.
OK, so what’s my point? To tie it all together, what I’m saying is that while we have really great maternity benefits in Canada, there is a significant subset of Canadian parents who are left out. And often the ones who are left out are the ones who are least able to take leave without receiving EI benefits. The government may be addressing that, which would be a step in the right direction. I guess for now we’ll just have to wait and see if the Expert Panel is actually formed, and what it does, and what sort of timeline they’re given.
Edited to add: In November, maternity and parental benefits for self-employed Canadians was announced. To find out more, read Maternity Leave for the Self-Employed Announced.
Look, lady, I thought we had an agreement that we were going to blog about how cute our kids are and how childbirth destroys your ability to use compound adjectives. Where do you get off being all penetrating and incisive and — what’s the word — coherent?
Great post, couldn’t agree more. Perhaps tomorrow I will try my hand at something a little more weighty than rotting fish. Hope springs eternal…
That’s really interesting. I would have thought (in ignorance) that maternity or parental benefits would not be tied to a job. Although I suppose the term “maternity leave” does imply leaving something, presumably a job.
Health insurance in the US is typically tied to a job, as are maternity leave benefits (known under the charming terms “pregnancy/childbirth disability” at my company).
Great post! As a self employed mamma myself I’d like to add that it isn’t just the Mat. Leave benefit we are unable to access but in Ontario we cannot deduct our daycare as a married self employed woman unless we ‘make enough money’ – sorry can’t remember the amount -as the credit is only applied to the lowest income earner who must clear a certain amount net, before the credit is applied.
In my case I had to eat the cost of leaving my daughter in daycare while I cared for my second and took time off work – after all, if I pulled her from daycare she would loose her spot and they might not have had a spot when I needed more care again.
There are many benefits to being self-employed. This isn’t one of them.
However, I already have one of the significant benefits of government guaranteed maternity leave, in that my boss isn’t going to fire me while I’m on leave. So that’s a good thing. And even if government benefits were accessible to me, I don’t actually work enough hours, I don’t think, to qualify.
On the downside, every moment I’m not working I’m just…not working. I’ll be returning to some form of work within weeks and months of my child’s birth. And I’ve set things up so that I can do that and not sacrifice my ideals of mothering, but still, it’s a lot of pressure.
Yeah, there’s a bit of a dead zone here in the government support of mothers who opt out of traditional employment in favour of the sort of jigsaw puzzle lifestyle of self-employment and mamahood. That ridiculous $100/month cheque that I get (the one that inspired my preschool to up their monthly fees by $100) doesn’t really address the situation.
I just emailed Libby Davies, my local MP to ask her what she was doing about this issue and it turns out one of her colleagues is already planning to address it in the House of Commons today. Strange coincidence! They said they’d send me an update sometime today, so I’ll pass along any info that I get.
Hi everyone,
I wanted to let you know that Libby asked a question about EI (including maternity and parental leave) for self-employed people during a debate in the House of Commons this morning. I have pasted it below (I’m sorry, I don’t have the Minister’s response as this is just the preliminary record. The formal record will be posted tomorrow).
Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP): Mr. Speaker, I think the minister knows that the NDP members have been very clear about our support for the unemployed and the changes that are needed in the employment insurance system. In fact, we have been supporting the bill and the $1 billion that was recently put forward.
I would like to ask the minister whether or not her government is prepared to bring forward the very necessary changes, particularly with maternity and paternity benefits for self-employed people.
We know that this is a very serious matter and that there are hundreds of thousands, millions of Canadians who are self-employed who are suffering because they cannot take advantage of the EI system and we think this is a very important.
Is the government prepared to bring forward this system in recognition of the great need that is out there and the reform that is needed to the EI system to help people who are self-employed?