Five-week leave for second parent on way

OTTAWA — The upcoming federal budget will include a five-week, use-it-or-lose-it incentive for new dads to take parental leave and share the responsibilities of raising their young child, the Canadian Press has learned.

In recent days, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has mused about just such an additional parental leave for the second parent.

The goal behind the measure — to be included in Tuesday’s budget — is to give parents more incentive to share child-rearing responsibilities so that new moms can more easily enter the workforce, a government official said.

The government has been under pressure from advocates to make further changes to Canada’s parental leave policies.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s budget is expected to have a strong focus on gender equality and on finding ways to help more women enter the workforce, not only as a matter of fairness, but also to bolster the economy.

A recently released briefing note prepared for Morneau said Canadian women with children are less involved in the labour market than their counterparts in many of the industrialized countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

In general, the participation rate of women in Canada’s job market is largely unchanged from where it was in the early 2000s, said the memo, obtained by the Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

The idea of parental leave for a second parent would be similar to a policy in Quebec, which is the only province that pays for leave for new fathers. Quebec’s system provides up to five weeks of paid leave to new fathers and covers up to 70 per cent of their income.

The Liberals have heard from experts that the popular program in Quebec should be replicated at the federal level.

Last week, Trudeau said making it easier for fathers to take time off to care for a newborn would help remove workforce barriers for women that are created by the expectation that they should take on the primary childrearing role. Trudeau said his government would consider parental-leave changes, specifically “leave that can only be taken by the second parent, in most cases the father.” He said it would be “a use-it-or-lose-it” model.