I’m simply pointing out the down side to the equivalently “meaningless” argument that backfill contracts are a good on-ramp. I’m not claiming that the consequen

I’m simply pointing out the down side to the equivalently “meaningless” argument that backfill contracts are a good on-ramp. I’m not claiming that the consequences of the policy overall are positive or negative — you’re reading that in. I haven’t written “just an opinion”. It’s self-evident that the generous mandatory policy changes incentives for businesses. My data itself is anecdotal of course, so the extent of impact is unknown — but I felt it important to clarify that these policies are not without negative effects (in addition to the obvious positive ones). It’s not helpful to say you’re providing numbers, and cite only Canada’s fertility rate. And? A much more useful number would be the number of temporary jobs vs. permanent. Unfortunately, in Canada temporary jobs have been growing much faster than permanent positions over the past twenty years [1]. (Not a hard connection, but Canada’s major parental leave change coincidentally came around 2000, which made it 52 weeks.) Obviously I understand there are many factors at work there. But this is probably one. I similarly understand there are many factors that cause public institutions to hire contractors. I pointed that out only to highlight that it’s not just “bad actors” engaging in this behavior. On that note, if government has sufficient incentives to kill permanent positions in favor of temporary ones (and you cite this), then isn’t self-evident that additional incentives in private industry would also lead to more of that behavior broadly? Of course. Is society still better off? IMHO probably, but 18 months seems excessive. I think if society truly values early childhood development, there are ways to support parents other than forcing private businesses to “keep a position” for years. [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/temporary-workers-employment-1.5135310 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/temporary-workers-employmen...