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I'm quite fond of Canada's system for parental leave[0]. The person giving birth gets 15 weeks off with 55% of their pay covered by their employment insurance (

by mabbo 7y ago

I'm quite fond of Canada's system for parental leave[0]. The person giving birth gets 15 weeks off with 55% of their pay covered by their employment insurance (EI), and the couple get to share, however they decide to split it, either 40 weeks (at 55% pay) or 69 weeks (at 33% pay). No cost to the employer, but they have to ensure there's the same job waiting when the person gets back. It also covers adoptions. It probably is hard as an employer but every business is playing on the same field. It's not like "Well, I won't participate in that because my competition would have an advantage over me". It's not optional and it's illegal to fire someone over it. Every business with employees has to accept this will happen eventually. The only optional choice (which my employer does) is to cover the other 45% of the pay for a certain number of weeks. Interestingly, often you hear about people getting in at businesses because "they had a temp opening because of a mat-leave!". This works a lot like an internship, where the employer gets to test out a potential employee while not committing to them since the person on leave will be back on a specific date. Great way to get experience and networking for young people. My teammate, for example, left a few weeks ago when his child was born. He'll be back in January. Sucks for our team to work without him that long, but it's nice to know that if I decide to have kids that option will be there for me too. [0]https://www.canada.ca/en/services/benefits/ei/ei-maternity-parental.html https://www.canada.ca/en/services/benefits/ei/ei-maternity-p...

cperciva 7y ago
I'm quite fond of Canada's system for parental leave You mean the system where, in upwards of 90% of cases, women take 50 weeks of leave and men take 5 weeks? I wouldn't call that a great system, personally.
- UnpossibleJim 7y ago
  I would. I think, personally investing in people makes for better people. A lot of times, that's done with time and not money. Money is a poor man's substitute for spending time with his children.
  - cperciva 7y ago
    Women taking 10x as much leave as men is great if you want to reinforce traditional gender roles about caregiving. Personally, I'd be happier if the 40 weeks of "parental" leave was required to be split 20/20 (subject to obvious exemptions if there is no second parent who is eligible for EI). This would still leave women with 75% more leave than men -- but I think that's a reasonable compromise given that the maternity leave is intended to cover time when a birth mother is medically unable to work, recovering from birth, etc.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      Male here in the US who received paternity leave twice for my two kids; my spouse and I prescribe to traditional gender roles, we’re both happy with it, and I would forgo mandatory paternity leave if I had to split leave offered. I’d rather be earning a large dollar amount (doing something I enjoy) than child rearing, even if I had to hire a nanny. Just not something I’m interested in doing full time, and life is too short to do things you don’t want to do if you have the means. I fully support leave, but leave it up to parents how they want to split it.
      - maxheadroom 7y ago
        >I’d rather be earning a large dollar amount (doing something I enjoy) than child-rearing, even if I had to hire a nanny. Just not something I’m interested in doing full time, and life is too short to do things you don’t want to do if you have the means. I apologise if this infers offence but the way that this reads is that you're not interested in child-rearing so one must ask the question that begs: "Is there a point in having children if you've no interest in their upbringing?"
        michaelt 7y ago
        Same reason men serving in the military or working abroad or on oil rigs or in long-haul trucking have children?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- xster 7y ago
  Are there sources?
HorizonXP 7y ago
We're in Canada, and my wife is taking 18 months. It's great, but as a correction, it's 55%/33% of your EI insurable earnings, which is a maximum of $53,100 (2019). There are modifiers for single parents and/or local unemployment rates. Also, they recently added a new parental leave benefit for the secondary caregiver so they can take 5/8 weeks off. It's a "use or it lose it" benefit, meaning you can't add it to the primary caregiver's leave. This effectively amounts to a paternal leave benefit that most everyone will now take, shifting the focus away from women (slightly) when a child is on the way.
amscanne 7y ago
It’s worth noting that the 55% is capped at the equivalent ~29k/yr, and the 33% is capped at ~17k/yr. Many employers will top off to 80% or 100% for some period of time, but I don’t know of any companies that do 18 months. > Interestingly, often you hear about people getting in at businesses because "they had a temp opening because of a mat-leave!". This works a lot like an internship, where the employer gets to test out a potential employee while not committing to them since the person on leave will be back on a specific date. Great way to get experience and networking for young people. You’re failing to articulate the down side of this. Both as a direct consequence (backfill) and indirect consequence (not wanting FTEs that can disappear for multiple 18 month periods with no recourse), there are far more recurring contract-only positions. I know multiple people that are stuck in perpetually-renewed annual contracts, no security and no benefits. At least two of those cases started as backfill, and as you note.. they did a good enough job that the employer wanted them to stay. But why would they actually risk hiring young women of child bearing age? (Just to cut off the obvious criticism, several of the people that I’m aware of actually work for the government, directly and indirectly. Canada has a big public sector.)
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
  This is a meaningless argument (FUD) against the Canadian position unless we can see the statistics before and after the policy was introduced. It does sound reasonable to assume there is some upward pressure on n-month long contracts over full time employment given the policy, but unless it can be shown the policy has had a significant impact on full time employment, accounting for all other factors, and that we can show there is a net decrease in the overall life satisfaction and national productivity, then what you've written is just an opinion. If we've got the numbers, let's go with the numbers. If all he have is opinions, let's go with mine: Canada's fertility rate is estimated to be approximately 1.6 children born per woman[1], and I'm fairly confident in my guess that the people who have children in excess of the average are disproportional unemployable people on social welfare, given that is presently the state of the things in the very similar Commonwealth country I reside in, Australia. Your last point is nonsensical. Pretty much every government agency employees a significant number of contractors because present day politico-economic ideology demands constant reduction in full time government employees because governments everywhere have a tenancy to prove themselves damagingly inefficient for a whole host of reasons. 1. https://www.indexmundi.com/canada/total_fertility_rate.html https://www.indexmundi.com/canada/total_fertility_rate.html
legostormtroopr 7y ago
> person giving birth You mean the "mother"?
- otabdeveloper4 7y ago
  Such lack of gender neutrality! I don't even! Doubleplus ungood!
- Broken_Hippo 7y ago
  Folks give birth without becoming a mother and one can be a mother without giving birth. Surrogates exist, for example. Folks give infants up for adoption. In this case, you can wind up with a mother who didn't birth the child and a person who gave birth, yet didn't actually become a mother except in a loose sense of the word. On the sadder end, stillbirths still happen and society doesn't really consider this person to be a mother. (I'm personally fine with whatever the parents choose to be called).
- kgwgk 7y ago
  It could also be father, stop assuming genders!
- mabbo 7y ago
  There's always more complexity than you know. There are trans men with wombs who give birth. There are are surrogates. There are 1000 other situations that I don't even know about. The law says "person giving birth", and I like that choice of wording. It doesn't exclude someone who is in a new, unexpected situation. Just the same, the law says that the two parents can share the weeks of work off, not "mother and father", as that's clearly not always going to be an accurate representation. It's not political correctness, just accuracy in terms.
AdrianB1 7y ago
This is one of the reasons Canada is becoming too expensive for some companies. My employer has almost 0.5 million direct and indirect employees and the Toronto offices are shrinking with almost zero new hires in the past 15 years. So yes, you can have benefits, but not everyone is happy to pay for it. For each Canadian that takes generous leaves there are hundreds of other people willing to work without it. I am just stating facts, not supporting any side (I live in Europe, we have long leaves too).
trax 7y ago
> The person giving birth You meant mother right?

by mabbo 7y ago

cperciva 7y ago

I'm quite fond of Canada's system for parental leave You mean the system where, in upwards of 90% of cases, women take 50 weeks of leave and men take 5 weeks? I wouldn't call that a great system, personally.

UnpossibleJim 7y ago
I would. I think, personally investing in people makes for better people. A lot of times, that's done with time and not money. Money is a poor man's substitute for spending time with his children.
- cperciva 7y ago
  Women taking 10x as much leave as men is great if you want to reinforce traditional gender roles about caregiving. Personally, I'd be happier if the 40 weeks of "parental" leave was required to be split 20/20 (subject to obvious exemptions if there is no second parent who is eligible for EI). This would still leave women with 75% more leave than men -- but I think that's a reasonable compromise given that the maternity leave is intended to cover time when a birth mother is medically unable to work, recovering from birth, etc.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Male here in the US who received paternity leave twice for my two kids; my spouse and I prescribe to traditional gender roles, we’re both happy with it, and I would forgo mandatory paternity leave if I had to split leave offered. I’d rather be earning a large dollar amount (doing something I enjoy) than child rearing, even if I had to hire a nanny. Just not something I’m interested in doing full time, and life is too short to do things you don’t want to do if you have the means. I fully support leave, but leave it up to parents how they want to split it.
    - maxheadroom 7y ago
      >I’d rather be earning a large dollar amount (doing something I enjoy) than child-rearing, even if I had to hire a nanny. Just not something I’m interested in doing full time, and life is too short to do things you don’t want to do if you have the means. I apologise if this infers offence but the way that this reads is that you're not interested in child-rearing so one must ask the question that begs: "Is there a point in having children if you've no interest in their upbringing?"
      - michaelt 7y ago
        Same reason men serving in the military or working abroad or on oil rigs or in long-haul trucking have children?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
xster 7y ago
Are there sources?

HorizonXP 7y ago

We're in Canada, and my wife is taking 18 months. It's great, but as a correction, it's 55%/33% of your EI insurable earnings, which is a maximum of $53,100 (2019). There are modifiers for single parents and/or local unemployment rates. Also, they recently added a new parental leave benefit for the secondary caregiver so they can take 5/8 weeks off. It's a "use or it lose it" benefit, meaning you can't add it to the primary caregiver's leave. This effectively amounts to a paternal leave benefit that most everyone will now take, shifting the focus away from women (slightly) when a child is on the way.

amscanne 7y ago

It’s worth noting that the 55% is capped at the equivalent ~29k/yr, and the 33% is capped at ~17k/yr. Many employers will top off to 80% or 100% for some period of time, but I don’t know of any companies that do 18 months. > Interestingly, often you hear about people getting in at businesses because "they had a temp opening because of a mat-leave!". This works a lot like an internship, where the employer gets to test out a potential employee while not committing to them since the person on leave will be back on a specific date. Great way to get experience and networking for young people. You’re failing to articulate the down side of this. Both as a direct consequence (backfill) and indirect consequence (not wanting FTEs that can disappear for multiple 18 month periods with no recourse), there are far more recurring contract-only positions. I know multiple people that are stuck in perpetually-renewed annual contracts, no security and no benefits. At least two of those cases started as backfill, and as you note.. they did a good enough job that the employer wanted them to stay. But why would they actually risk hiring young women of child bearing age? (Just to cut off the obvious criticism, several of the people that I’m aware of actually work for the government, directly and indirectly. Canada has a big public sector.)

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
This is a meaningless argument (FUD) against the Canadian position unless we can see the statistics before and after the policy was introduced. It does sound reasonable to assume there is some upward pressure on n-month long contracts over full time employment given the policy, but unless it can be shown the policy has had a significant impact on full time employment, accounting for all other factors, and that we can show there is a net decrease in the overall life satisfaction and national productivity, then what you've written is just an opinion. If we've got the numbers, let's go with the numbers. If all he have is opinions, let's go with mine: Canada's fertility rate is estimated to be approximately 1.6 children born per woman[1], and I'm fairly confident in my guess that the people who have children in excess of the average are disproportional unemployable people on social welfare, given that is presently the state of the things in the very similar Commonwealth country I reside in, Australia. Your last point is nonsensical. Pretty much every government agency employees a significant number of contractors because present day politico-economic ideology demands constant reduction in full time government employees because governments everywhere have a tenancy to prove themselves damagingly inefficient for a whole host of reasons. 1. https://www.indexmundi.com/canada/total_fertility_rate.html https://www.indexmundi.com/canada/total_fertility_rate.html

legostormtroopr 7y ago

> person giving birth You mean the "mother"?

otabdeveloper4 7y ago
Such lack of gender neutrality! I don't even! Doubleplus ungood!
Broken_Hippo 7y ago
Folks give birth without becoming a mother and one can be a mother without giving birth. Surrogates exist, for example. Folks give infants up for adoption. In this case, you can wind up with a mother who didn't birth the child and a person who gave birth, yet didn't actually become a mother except in a loose sense of the word. On the sadder end, stillbirths still happen and society doesn't really consider this person to be a mother. (I'm personally fine with whatever the parents choose to be called).
kgwgk 7y ago
It could also be father, stop assuming genders!
mabbo 7y ago
There's always more complexity than you know. There are trans men with wombs who give birth. There are are surrogates. There are 1000 other situations that I don't even know about. The law says "person giving birth", and I like that choice of wording. It doesn't exclude someone who is in a new, unexpected situation. Just the same, the law says that the two parents can share the weeks of work off, not "mother and father", as that's clearly not always going to be an accurate representation. It's not political correctness, just accuracy in terms.

AdrianB1 7y ago

This is one of the reasons Canada is becoming too expensive for some companies. My employer has almost 0.5 million direct and indirect employees and the Toronto offices are shrinking with almost zero new hires in the past 15 years. So yes, you can have benefits, but not everyone is happy to pay for it. For each Canadian that takes generous leaves there are hundreds of other people willing to work without it. I am just stating facts, not supporting any side (I live in Europe, we have long leaves too).

trax 7y ago

> The person giving birth You meant mother right?