5 ms·

They should offer more incentives to have children, make it easier. Provide tax breaks, additional compensation benefits, mandatory time off work etc. Edit: A

They should offer more incentives to have children, make it easier. Provide tax breaks, additional compensation benefits, mandatory time off work etc. Edit: After doing some searching, learned more about what they get. https://www.ipmu.jp/en/page/dbbb4775-1008-4deb-8d7d-8766e5d8c9f8#:~:text=Duration%20of%20maternity%20leave,approval%20by%20a%20medical%20doctor https://www.ipmu.jp/en/page/dbbb4775-1008-4deb-8d7d-8766e5d8.... Overall I think the benefits are decent, however I don't think they fully support fathers. Fathers can take 7 days while mom is on mat leave at same time. Then later you can have nursing time, 30 min breaks from work? Can show up 30 mins late?? How about some actual time off so you can help out at early stages of life and not too be financially worried. Canada we get 12-18 months shared between spouses, other countries get better

pythonguython 4y ago
According to the article, that is the plan
RestlessMind 4y ago
And yet, Canada's TFR is only 1.4 in spite of generous parental leave, free healthcare and free education. What gives?
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  None of those statements are 100% true, and in some provinces basically false. Leave isn't generous, and requires that you have paid into EI for at least 1 year, otherwise you get nothing. Education definitely isn't true, though in-province rates, esp. in QC, aren't crazy. But most of my friends had student loans. Healthcare in a hospital is free. You need dental, optical, or 3rd party specialist stuff? Good luck. The quality also varies greatly -- if you're in the nicest part of Toronto I'm sure it's great, but rural SK healthcare is basically bandaids and a bus ticket to the provincial capital. Ontario has their own mini-Trump who just push through healthcare privatization, and Alberta has been hammering it for years. AB, despite being the richest province due to all that oil, has consistently slashed education and healthcare, most notably booting out a ton of hospital staff right before COVID hit, which lead to big protests from the AHS ("nurses strike", etc). QC has subsidized daycare, but seats are often hard to get. In exchange taxes are the highest in Canada, and salaries are unimpressive.
  - RestlessMind 4y ago
    Oh wow, thanks for shedding some light. Do you mind sharing references to what you said? Will be useful to counter the "US so bad, look at Canada bwahaha" smug narratives.
    - Tiktaalik 4y ago
      Canadians can remain smug that their social safety net is much better than the USA and many other countries, but nonetheless there are enormous holes that can still be filled which would make life more affordable for regular people and would conceivably aid in making people feel more comfortable to be able to afford to have more children. Parent correct to note that Dentalcare is not part of Universal Healthcare, but even more significant than that there is no Universal Pharmacare, though there's some aids for the poor and elderly. Two weeks vacation is pretty standard and many Canadians have very little vacation time. Until very recently many people had no minimum sick days (though your typical tech company would have a few). Only during the pandemic has there been adgitation to try to create some minimums. The Feds brought in 10 days minimum sick days for workers under their purview, but provinces demurred from going that far. Only just now is Canada slowly rolling out affordable universal $10/day childcare and so the next few decades will be interesting in that academics can study the impact of this on births. The most significant thing Canada could do to encourage more births would be to make family friendly homes (ie. 1300 sqft+) dramatically more available and affordable. Right now there's a huge shortage and they're basically unaffordable without existing wealth. Japan does not seem to have this problem so bad as they have an enormous surplus of homes and their home prices have been stagnant for a long time.
      - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
        One note 1300sqft homes could be condos, even if Canadians are condo resistant. They should make the condo more soundproof, no doubt, but living in a 3 bedroom condo @ 1300sqft is pretty nice, we do so ourselves with 2 children. Plenty of space. It was super expensive for us.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
Canada time off is paid at most 2000/month though. That's almost nothing in big cities where rent is 2500 for 2 bedrooms (Vancouver). I appreciate the incredible parental leave, but it's still very rough, one parent MUST go back to work or it gets really hard. If you have a mortgage is probably just impossible. That being said, 7 days is a joke. To any father, 7 days and your baby is as big as your forearm, and you are supposed to leave that creature at home. Bah. 1 month seems the minimum, given that afterbirth complications start to settle only after that mark and medically speaking there is a big "mark" in terms of weight for that date.

pythonguython 4y ago

According to the article, that is the plan

RestlessMind 4y ago

And yet, Canada's TFR is only 1.4 in spite of generous parental leave, free healthcare and free education. What gives?

red-iron-pine 4y ago
None of those statements are 100% true, and in some provinces basically false. Leave isn't generous, and requires that you have paid into EI for at least 1 year, otherwise you get nothing. Education definitely isn't true, though in-province rates, esp. in QC, aren't crazy. But most of my friends had student loans. Healthcare in a hospital is free. You need dental, optical, or 3rd party specialist stuff? Good luck. The quality also varies greatly -- if you're in the nicest part of Toronto I'm sure it's great, but rural SK healthcare is basically bandaids and a bus ticket to the provincial capital. Ontario has their own mini-Trump who just push through healthcare privatization, and Alberta has been hammering it for years. AB, despite being the richest province due to all that oil, has consistently slashed education and healthcare, most notably booting out a ton of hospital staff right before COVID hit, which lead to big protests from the AHS ("nurses strike", etc). QC has subsidized daycare, but seats are often hard to get. In exchange taxes are the highest in Canada, and salaries are unimpressive.
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  Oh wow, thanks for shedding some light. Do you mind sharing references to what you said? Will be useful to counter the "US so bad, look at Canada bwahaha" smug narratives.
  - Tiktaalik 4y ago
    Canadians can remain smug that their social safety net is much better than the USA and many other countries, but nonetheless there are enormous holes that can still be filled which would make life more affordable for regular people and would conceivably aid in making people feel more comfortable to be able to afford to have more children. Parent correct to note that Dentalcare is not part of Universal Healthcare, but even more significant than that there is no Universal Pharmacare, though there's some aids for the poor and elderly. Two weeks vacation is pretty standard and many Canadians have very little vacation time. Until very recently many people had no minimum sick days (though your typical tech company would have a few). Only during the pandemic has there been adgitation to try to create some minimums. The Feds brought in 10 days minimum sick days for workers under their purview, but provinces demurred from going that far. Only just now is Canada slowly rolling out affordable universal $10/day childcare and so the next few decades will be interesting in that academics can study the impact of this on births. The most significant thing Canada could do to encourage more births would be to make family friendly homes (ie. 1300 sqft+) dramatically more available and affordable. Right now there's a huge shortage and they're basically unaffordable without existing wealth. Japan does not seem to have this problem so bad as they have an enormous surplus of homes and their home prices have been stagnant for a long time.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago
      One note 1300sqft homes could be condos, even if Canadians are condo resistant. They should make the condo more soundproof, no doubt, but living in a 3 bedroom condo @ 1300sqft is pretty nice, we do so ourselves with 2 children. Plenty of space. It was super expensive for us.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 4y ago

Canada time off is paid at most 2000/month though. That's almost nothing in big cities where rent is 2500 for 2 bedrooms (Vancouver). I appreciate the incredible parental leave, but it's still very rough, one parent MUST go back to work or it gets really hard. If you have a mortgage is probably just impossible. That being said, 7 days is a joke. To any father, 7 days and your baby is as big as your forearm, and you are supposed to leave that creature at home. Bah. 1 month seems the minimum, given that afterbirth complications start to settle only after that mark and medically speaking there is a big "mark" in terms of weight for that date.