Self-Employed Parental Leave Benefits

October 3, 2008 · Posted in News, Policy 

When our son arrived into the world 3 years ago, we were determined to spend as much time as we could with him, so chose to keep him at home, and all the sacrifices that came with this (Ken Dryden, I’m sure, was completely horrified).

There is more to the story, though.

My wife and I were both working for our home-based business. So while keeping our son at home was easy, juggling work responsibilities with caring for our newborn was an awesome challenge, especially in the beginning. The financial hit was immediate and sustained. But we knew this would happen, and we did our best to prepare for it.

Our friends (with real jobs) took paid leave to care for their children, and couldn’t understand why we didn’t qualify for benefits. Somehow, when parental benefits came about in Canada, the Governments of the day presumed that only employees had children, but not employers. The stereotype of the employer as a wealthy old man living in a mansion just doesn’t work anymore. Jack Layton probably doesn’t understand this, but Stephen Harper sure the hell gets it.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to see the new Conservative policy to extend parental leave benefits to self-employed parents. While we have decided not to have any more children, we are thankful that in the future ALL new parents in Canada will be able to enjoy the benefits available, and be able to spend more time with their children without worrying about breaking the bank.

For most, this might seem like a minor and unimportant policy shift (and, compared to the billions of dollars slushing around government, this will be “small”), but for the affected families, I assure you, it will have a colossal impact on their lives!

Congratulations to Stephen Harper for supporting ALL Canadian families!

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Comments

  • Cranky or Just a Crank

    I am curious about where this money is coming from.

    If paid parental leave is to be subsidized by the taxpayers, then it should be available to all tapayers and paid for by all taxpayers, or nobdy should get it.

    As it now stands it is run through the EI scheme which has me, as an employer, paying more than I should be (not to mention employees paying more than they should be) since people are taking out benefits for matters that aren’t really what the system is designed to protect against – loss of employment.

    Although it is a good reason to leave the workforce for a while, it is still a voluntary absence from the workplace that other salaried employees are, but the self employed are not, subsidizing.

    My personal view is that at most, you should get job protection while you are off on parenal leave, but you shouldn’t be paid while you’re out. This would also put the employed and self-employed in more or less the same boat. If you choose to have kids, then you should plan for them and be ready to take of them, including where necessary being without a salary.

  • Cara

    Paul, this campaign promise is something that I, and many small business owners that I know, have been waiting for for years. My husband and I are literally waiting for the campaign promise to happen so we can have a child – tick tick tick I hope it happens soon.

    In response to Cranky or Just a Crank:

    My husband and I are both self-employed (separate businesses). For every dollar that our employees have paid into EI over the years, we have paid $1.60 as the employer contribution. Therefore we have paid 160% of what regular workers pay for a system that we can never access.

    Even if we do get parental leave benefits, we will never be able to use the system for the more common purpose, job loss. Obviously we cannot lay ourselves off. Under the Conservative plan, we will pay in for at least 6 months before being able to access parental leave. Given how much we have paid, and how little of the system we are asking for access to, I think this is reasonable. Some people are self-employed and will never have an employee, so maybe their 6 months of EI payments will not cover their parental benefits but look, people only have 1 or 2 kids nowadays and the EI system has a ridiculous surplus (because 75% of people who lose their jobs or leave to be parents are not eligible for EI under current policy), so let’s just let self-employed (mostly) women have a baby or two if they want to, okay? Let’s not punish people for being willing to take risks, create jobs, and contribute to their community through business leadership.