Federal budget to unveil expanded parental leave
‘Use-it-or-lose-it’ incentive would allow second parent to take 5-week paid time off
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, said a government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the budget details have yet to be made public.
The government has been under increasing 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 new ways to help more women enter the workforce — not only as a matter of fairness, but also as a way to bolster the entire economy.
A recently released briefing note prepared for Morneau said Canadian women with children are less in- volved in the labour market than their counterparts in many of the industrialized countries in the OECD.
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 prime minister also suggested the leave could include, for instance, a partner in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender relationships.
“Whatever format you have, that path is removing some of the barriers and the obligations and the expectations that hold women back in the workforce, so there are a lot of things to do,” he said.
Last year’s budget pegged the cost of the measure at $152 million over five years and $27.5 million a year afterwards.