Much to consider on parental leave policy

We need more young female politicians, but elected office is unlike any other job

On Wednesday, the executive committee of Edmonton city council will debate a groundbreaking new policy proposal — extended parental leave for sitting city councillors.

No other city in Canada offers such leave, although Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia are all considering following in Alberta’s footsteps — and giving their cities that power.

The draft policy would allow a councillor to take 26 weeks, or six months, of leave at the time of the birth or adoption of a child without penalty.

Councillors would be paid their full salaries for the first 10 weeks of their leave. After that, compensation would be by agreement, pro-rated based on how much part-time work a councillor might be doing from home. (Since councillors don’t qualify for employment insurance benefits, all their compensation would continued to come from the city budget, not from EI.)

As a feminist, as a mother, and as someone who spends a fair bit of time at city hall watching councillors at work, I find myself in a self-admitted muddle of ambivalence about the proposal.

Yes, we absolutely need to recruit diverse voices and perspectives to city council. If we want a council that reflects our entire city, and which represents the interests of a wide range of Edmontonians, we need to encourage more women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s to run for office.

And it would help if they didn’t have to worry that a pregnancy, whether planned or unplanned, might derail their careers.

Of course, it’s not only women who benefit from parental leave. We also want to encourage new fathers to be active parents. If male elected officials publicly took paternity leave, it wouldn’t just be good for their families, they’d be role models, sending a message to all fresh dads about the value of sharing parental responsibilities.

And yet.

Being a city councillor isn’t like any other job. It’s not part-time work. It’s a full-time job, and then some. When you run for city council, you aren’t just working for your boss. You’re working for the voters who elected you — and, for that matter, for the voters who didn’t. You owe the citizens who cast those votes a special duty. You represent them. And if you take a six-month leave of absence, you leave them in the lurch. Sure, you can hire extra staff in your office to handle phone calls and deal with citizen grievances. But as a councillor, you cannot be “back-filled.”

There’s also a risk that the new policy might, perversely, make it harder for women to get elected. People might hesitate to vote for a female candidate if they’re worried she might take an extended leave in the middle of her term.

(And it’s not just the leave time. Being a new mother can be even tougher than being a city councillor. Having a baby is a bit like having a bomb go off in your life. I’m sure I wasn’t the first working woman to assume that I’d go right back to work when by daughter was born, only to find that the physical and emotional demands of new motherhood had knocked me

Men and women have babies. It’s one of the most natural things that people do. Councillors are only human beings.

for a loop. There’s no one rule or model that fits every mother, or every father, or every baby. I hate the thought of women being made to feel they’re inadequate with the knowledge they can’t all be superwomen, effortlessly combining a demanding career with post-natal care.)

And yet.

This is 2017. And men and women have babies. It’s one of the most natural things that people do. Councillors are only human beings. Sometimes they need time off work because they’ve had a heart attack, or because they need knee-replacement surgery or because they’ve just had a bad concussion.

We don’t elect androids. We elect real, live humans, with all their quirks and frailties. If we can accommodate a councillor who needs triple-bypass surgery, or a councillor who is going through chemotherapy or a councillor who is in a car accident, we should surely be able to find a way to accommodate the occasional infant. It may even be easier, now that councillors are serving four-year terms, so that a maximum six-month leave would only be one-eighth of their term.

Is a 26-week leave too long? Is 10 weeks of full pay too generous? Too stingy? I think those are fair areas for debate. But as Edmonton leads the country in trying to find answers, I think we owe it to ourselves to have that debate, in the interests of all Edmontonians, and in the interests of truly representative democracy.