News release

Employment Insurance Changes Needed

Status of Women

NOTE: A copy of the open letter follows this release.

Mothers need better support from the federal government to help care for their families, the chair of the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women says in an open letter to Liza Frulla, Minister of Social Development, and Joseph Volpe, Minister of Human Resources Development.

The letter by Doreen Paris calls upon the federal government to look for new ways to provide maternity, parental and caregiver benefits, which it now provides through the Employment Insurance program. The program's eligibility requirements disproportionately exclude women, she says, particularly women who have lower levels of education or a disability and women who are younger, single mothers, immigrants, or of Aboriginal descent.

Women in the workforce -- whether they work part time or on contracts, or are self-employed -- need to take time from their paid employment to care for themselves and their children or others. This can be accomplished, writes Ms. Paris, by developing a separate program of social security that would leave the employment insurance program to do what it was meant to do -- insure the incomes of unemployed Canadians.


An open letter to Liza Frulla, Minister of Social Development, and Joseph Volpe, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development:

Dear Ministers:

I'm writing on behalf of mothers in Nova Scotia, who need your support. They need your help to access benefits that allow them to care for their families. I refer, of course, to maternity, parental, and caregiver benefits.

In 2001, Human Resources Development Canada increased the maximum duration of maternity and parental benefits to 50 weeks from 36 weeks. This move significantly increased the value of the benefits and aimed to allow a new mother and father to share a full year of income replacement. Like the newly introduced caregiver benefits -- which allow women to provide care at the other end of the life cycle -- it is no small benefit: it could, and in some cases does, provide a real value.

However, these benefits come from the employment insurance (EI) system, which means that many women who work and who have children are not eligible for the benefit. Women, the very people for whom maternity benefits were created, are less likely than men to qualify for employment insurance. And some women who work part time or part year, women who pay an EI premium on every cheque, qualify for nothing because they can't meet the program's criteria. These are the women who most need this support when they have a new baby.

Women who are self-employed are also not eligible for these benefits because they don't contribute to EI.

When the federal government shifted the focus of its unemployment insurance program to employment insurance in 1996, one of the stated aims was to improve women's access to the benefit.

In fact, a report released by the Canadian Labour Congress in 2003 shows that women's access to EI benefits dropped between 1996 and 2001. As an example, in Nova Scotia, just over half (52 per cent) of unemployed women received unemployment insurance in 1996; only 44 per cent received EI benefits in 2001.

Less than half of Canadian women who gave birth in 1998 received maternity benefits. Many who did watched their income dive: EI benefits replace 55 per cent of a person's wages. Many employers do not top that up.

In Canada we have a three-tier maternity benefits program: The largest group is made up of women who receive no maternity benefits; the next largest group receives the benefits, just over half their regular wage, for 50 weeks; the smallest group -- women who work for a government or other major employers -- have their benefits topped up by their employer, usually for the maternity benefits portion of their leave.

Women who are most likely to have lower incomes -- young women, women with little education, low-income women, single mothers, immigrant women, Aboriginal women and women with disabilities -- are least likely to get the maternity benefits needed to support good health for mother and baby.

In Canada, the birth rate has dropped to a decade low of 1.5, substantially below replacement levels. One reason is that young couples have a much harder time establishing themselves in the workforce. They delay childbearing and limit the number of children they have because our supports for young families are weak. Economic restructuring has meant that even women with higher levels of education have to work part-time or at contract or other precarious work, and the number of self-employed women continues to grow. These women are penalized when they choose to have children or to take time to care for a critically, possibly terminally, ill family member.

It's time to reconsider how to provide maternity, parental, and caregiver benefits. This can be accomplished by developing a separate program of social security that would leave the employment insurance program to do what it was meant to do -- insure the incomes of unemployed Canadians.

Doreen Paris, Chair, Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women