
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation backtracks on one-year parental leaves - prostoalex
https://qz.com/work/1541822/the-bill-melinda-gates-foundation-is-backtracking-on-year-long-parental-leaves/
======
simonsarris
> [heading] How do they manage in Canada?

> In Canada, companies have had no option but to make 52-week parental leaves
> work, when requested, since 2000. The question Canadian companies ask isn’t
> “Can we do it?” but “How do we do it?”

Okay, so... how do they do it? They never answer the question.

If you have say, a CFO or a specialist mechanic (that you only need 1 of, but
definitely need) and they take a year off, what do you do? Just go without a
CFO/mechanic for the year? Or do you start the hiring search, bring in another
person as a temp CFO for a year? What if you can't find a temp, so you hire
someone? Is the person entitled to their old job back? Do you fire the new
person or the old one?

What if the person takes parental leave again after 1 month back? Do you
accept that you've torpedoed some role? Do you try to slowly phase out this
person's job description and offload their work onto their coworkers?

More succinctly, what if someone is definitely necessary in the near-day-to-
day, and does not do work that is interchangeable with other employees?

I'm not trying to make some kind of gotcha. I really don't know the answer,
and I figured the article would answer what seem like extremely obvious
questions that arise, but it didn't.

I _suspect_ that firms _have_ learned to deal with it, but by doing things
like passively selecting against women and younger people for critical roles.
Is _that_ how they manage? Is that an improvement?

There's also something unsettling about "here's how [countries where the
native birth rate is pretty much 0 or 1 babies] do parental leave!" feels a
bit like... the women already did half the corporation's work for them.

~~~
unavoidable
Surprisingly few people are actually trying to answer this question on this
thread. The answer is straightforward: you either structure your organization
so that there are enough overlapping responsibilities to account for parental
leaves (e.g. good business practice of not making a fragile organization), or
you hire a temporary employee explicitly on a 1 year "parental leave"
contract.

The labour market is quite good, and there is no shortage of qualified
individuals for almost all positions (CFO, specialists included). Often, a
good temp ends up getting another position at the same company after doing the
1-year contract. There is also a small cottage industry of successful
individuals who basically take such jobs.

Maybe hard to accept for some, but the world doesn't end when people go on
leave to have kids.

It also turns out that most people (that I know) are quite happy to buy into
this particular social contract. There is a tacit understanding that you might
have to pick up the slack a bit for someone else, but one day you might need
the same in return - borrowing against the future is another way to think
about it.

Source: Canadian, have worked in organizations and involved in hiring policies
where this is successful.

~~~
bluecalm
It's surely doable in big organizations but small businesses it's an
overwhelming cost even if the government pays the salary of the worker on a
leave (the only way it can really work). Maybe the answer to that problem is
that really important employees who make a lot of money shouldn't be hired as
normal workers but as contractors. Something like: if you get 3x more average
salary then you are important but you only get paid if you work and standard
protections don't apply. If you get a normal salary standard protections apply
but then we will hopefully be able to find replacement for you at reasonable
cost. It would be nice if I at least don't nee to re-hire you after covering
big costs of getting your replacement up to speed.

If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not
risk hiring a young woman as getting a new employee to the stage where they
contribute value is a huge cost. If I am hiring a cleaning lady or social
media specialist then I won't have problems because I will easily find the
replacement on the market and they can be productive from day one. If you
think it's immoral, think again. I have responsibilities towards my family to
provide for them. I won't take risk which can ruin my source of income for the
sake of someone's children. What is immoral is forcing employers to cover that
risk.

~~~
lhorie
> If I am looking for 3rd programmer in my 2 person small company I will not
> risk hiring a young woman

Ignoring the fact that this kind of discrimination is flat out illegal, you
are forgetting to consider that the Canadian policy allows males to take
parental leave as well, so the excuse for the discrimination isn't even
logically consistent.

Personally, having lead teams of people ranging from experienced professionals
to interns still in school, I find it extremely hard to imagine a small
business that is such a special snowflake that "getting a new employee to the
stage where they contribute value is a huge cost". I could get interns to be
productive in a day or two. In many fields of work, such as early education,
there are standardized accreditations so an employer can basically just pick
and choose from a pool of qualified individuals who will be ready-to-work on
day 1.

As the other poster said, standard fare in parental leaves is to hire a
contractor for a 1 year contract. By the end of the year, worst case is your
business grew 0%, you get your full-time employee back and it's business as
usual. A more realistic scenario is your business grew by some amount that now
allows you to hire the temp person full time.

~~~
Mirioron
> _you are forgetting to consider that the Canadian policy allows males to
> take parental leave as well, so the excuse for the discrimination isn 't
> even logically consistent._

But they are much less likely to take this parental leave.

> _Personally, having lead teams of people ranging from experienced
> professionals to interns still in school, I find it extremely hard to
> imagine a small business that is such a special snowflake that "getting a
> new employee to the stage where they contribute value is a huge cost"._

Well, everyone else doesn't get to always run wildly successful small
businesses. Most small businesses fail. I imagine that if you yank out a
significant portion of their workforce that they'll be even more likely to
fail.

> _By the end of the year, worst case is your business grew 0%, you get your
> full-time employee back and it 's business as usual._

Aka your small business shuts its doors, because the market has moved on and
you couldn't keep up. Half the businesses fail within the first 5 years. Only
a third of businesses survive 10 years.

~~~
lhorie
> But they are much less likely to take this parental leave

If you want to talk about likelihoods, consider that in most companies, the
chance that an employee of any gender will leave for a random reason is much
higher than someone of any gender taking parental leave. Trying to skirt the
law to "optimize" for least parental leaves is kinda like sending a memo to
your employees telling them to always run red lights and jaywalk to get to
work faster. It's one of those "not even wrong" kinds of things.

> Most small businesses fail

This is a non sequitur. Businesses fail for all sorts of reasons. Your
restaurant staff ghosting you, not enough clients, spending stupidly after
raising money, etc. If your business fails due to a parental leave of all
things, let me tell you, you were probably severely delusional about its
viability to begin with.

> Aka your small business shuts its doors

I believe I mentioned a fitting example where this could not be farther from
the truth (early education)

~~~
Mirioron
But none of the things you mentioned are different between men and women.
Parental leave is simply a risk factor on top of what you mentioned.

> _If your business fails due to a parental leave of all things, let me tell
> you, you were probably severely delusional about its viability to begin
> with._

Let's take an extreme case: a 1 person business. If I, the business owner,
take parental leave then my business is pretty much guaranteed to fail. The
rate gets lower the more employees and capital you have, because you can
mitigate the risk, but many businesses are susceptible to this risk, because
they simply don't have the resources to mitigate it. That doesn't really tell
you much about the viability of the business. It says much more about the
resources the business had available. Not everyone is born with a silver spoon
in their mouth.

~~~
lhorie
I actually have a friend who runs a restaurant with her husband. It's an
_extremely low margins_ business with brutally long hours. She got pregnant
and eventually took time off (she went back to China for a few months to get
her parents to help with the baby). When she came back a few months later,
surprise surprise, the business was still there. Did they have worries? Sure,
stress from wait staff turnover, an air conditioner that was too expensive to
fix, chairs. But leaving for an extended period of time to decompress from
work stress was something her husband supported despite the temp long distance
relationship and the extra burden on himself because he knew that would help
them cope better in the long term.

Let's be honest, anyone can come up with ridiculous hypothetical situations
where "obviously" parental leave is the only evil in the world and must be
banished. But at the end of the day, they're just that: hypotheticals with no
basis in reality. I've seen businesses succeed and fail and I've seen parental
leaves in these businesses. Parental leaves are simply not as deciding of a
factor as one might like to fantasize, and anyone who wants to argue against
them might want to look at the silver spoons in their own mouths before
casting stones at others.

~~~
Mirioron
Restaurants aren't exactly businesses where people become difficult to
replace. Imagine you had a company that was trying to start a video service
and the expert on ffmpeg goes on parental leave half way through. Good luck
replacing somebody like that if you're not in a tech hotspot.

~~~
lhorie
> Imagine you had a company that was trying to start a video service and the
> expert on ffmpeg goes on parental leave half way through

Typically you get like 3-6 months notice on a parental leave, so you've got
plenty of time to find a contractor/consultant, compared to the standard 2
week notice from the much more likely scenario of your expert quitting for
greener pastures. If you have such high risk riding on a single employee,
you're probably the one to blame: why aren't _you_ (or an equity partner) the
expert? Do you not have anything else whatsoever that could be done in the
meantime if core development halted/slowed for 6 months? Do you realize an
ffmpeg expert can earn twice as much just about anywhere other than your yet-
to-be-profitable startup and gets recruiter spam from big tech companies on
linkedin every month? Can you even afford benefits and severance for a full
time employee in the first place? etc.

Blaming a hypothetical business failure on a parental leave is really just
finding a scapegoat for one's inability to take responsibility for their own
failings.

Being in a tech hotspot is irrelevant. I've worked remotely for people in
Boulder with a coworker living in Vermont. Again, if you want to run a high
tech business from rural Wisconsin with no remote workers, that's on you, and
has nothing to do with parental leaves.

------
erentz
To be somewhat fair this is still an _amazing_ benefit: “It’s now capping
parental leaves at six months and giving parents a taxable $20,000 stipend to
defray the costs of childcare.”

In the context that they are doing this while few other American organizations
do it, and not that many other countries do something this generous.

~~~
hesdeadjim
Yea, the article title can practically considered clickbait when this is the
resultant change in benefits. Neither my wife or I had a need to be home for
an entire year with our child. Three months for me would've been perfect, six
would've been a vacation, and six months plus $20k to cover my daycare
expenses for the year would've been... well, words fail me.

~~~
bargl
OK, I read this felt a wave of relief. I'm not the only one. 1 year off sounds
like torture to me.

I'm not saying 1 year with my kid is torture. 1 year in the Caribbean would
also be torture to me. I get cabin fever after a few weeks.

My company did give me 1 month and it was awesome. I was also very happy to
return to work after 2 (1 month unpaid). It was refreshing to engage that part
of my brain again.

~~~
hesdeadjim
Yea I have zero desire to be off from work for that long.

I took a sabbatical/break between projects from May until around September
this year. I put myself under no real pressure to do anything, and during the
weekdays I was free to go mountain biking and do whatever else I felt like.

Yet still I worked on random projects for about 60% of the time the entire
break. I just crave the deep flow state that comes from building things too
much.

------
bargl
The fact that after they backed off of the leave they are giving out a 20K
bonus for child care is amazing in and of itself.

I'm surprised that's not emphasized more. They probably also have very
flexible work environment for parents so that when daycare's are closed and
other issues crop up the parents can get back in there.

I'm a dad of 2, 2 years and 5 year. I don't know if I'd want a year off to
stay home with the kids. I'd have loved to get 3 months instead of the 1 month
i did get but a year... That just sounds like a lot of cabin fever to me. I'm
sure a lot of people would appreciate it, so I'm 100% not knocking it at all.
This new benefit is more attractive to me at least.

~~~
fastbeef
I have to say, the first day at work after 9 months of parental leave is...
sublime. To be able to go to the bathroom and close the door is a pleasure you
don’t know until you have to go without.

As an aside, what happens to children in the US between 1 month until they
start kindergarten (and at what age)?

~~~
dyarosla
Private daycare or nannies fill the gap.

~~~
bradlys
There is also stay at home parents. Somewhere around 20%.

[http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/24/stay-at-
home...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/09/24/stay-at-home-moms-
and-dads-account-for-about-one-in-five-u-s-parents/)

------
fastbeef
I’m not surprised. This is so different to how workplaces are usually run in
the US that organizations, or society even, has no institutional memory on how
to deal with it.

In Sweden, where 400+ days of parental leave has been mandatory for years
organization have adapted and learned patterns and ways to deal with people
dissappearing for around a year.

It’s a shame the Gates Foundation didn’t research this better before diving
in.

~~~
chrisco255
People aren't easily replaceable...especially high talent individuals. It's
also a big burden for an organization to pay for non-productive workers. And
if someone has several children in a row...then what? What are the limits?

~~~
fastbeef
Its paid by the government, funded by taxes, at the same level as sick
leave/disability. Some (most) companies actually chip in a little (or a lot)
to ease the income loss as a perk.

------
alkonaut
“How do other countries do it?”

Well it’s not an employer deciding whether it’s done so organizations just
deal with it. And yes it does give effects that last years and disrupt
organizations three layers deep. But it happens to _all_ organizations, so
it’s not a competitive disadvantage.

~~~
chrisco255
Except on a global scale.

~~~
chefkoch
In Germany we have 12 months parental leave and it seems the country is doing
quite well.

~~~
ar0
Salaries especially for specialist jobs tend to be quite a bit lower in
Germany (as is the case in Canada) than in countries like the U.S. or
Switzerland which have much less generous parental leave, though. Of course,
parental leave is just one variable here, but in a way this is the obvious
trade-off: You can have more parental leave and lower salaries, or less
parental leave and higher salaries. (The same is true for all other non-
monetary benefits of a job such as job protection etc.) On a country-level,
both options can work equally well.

Me, personally, I would pick the "more parental leave and lower salaries", but
I get that other people might feel differently.

(Edit: This cuts the other way around, too, by the way. Often people in
Germany will complain that people across the border in Switzerland -- or in
Silicon Valley -- will earn much more, but they ignore that working days are
longer, with less vacation time, less parental leave etc.)

~~~
chrisco255
Yeah it would be amazing if people could understand that there are big trade-
offs with every socialistic policy.

U.S. GDP per capita [1] (2018): $65,060 Germany GDP per capita [1] (2018):
$49,690

The U.S. earns 22% more per capita than Germany.

Imagine if the U.S. implemented policies such that our economy slowed to
Germany's per capita rate. At our current GDP of $20.66 trillion, it would
wipe over $4 trillion from our GDP. Seeing as the U.S. is the biggest
marketplace in the world (in terms of dollars), it would have trickle down
effects that would dramatically depress the world economy.

[1]:
[https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/USA/DEU/...](https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/NGDPDPC@WEO/USA/DEU/SWE)

------
beart
As a parent, I would much rather take that year and use it to shorten my
normal working week for as long as possible.

With 260 working days a year, you could work 4 days a week for the first five
years of your child's life.

~~~
Haydos585x2
In Australia that's not unheard of. Plenty of women (and men) will go to a 3
or 4 day work week for a longer stretch rather than taking a full 12 months
off.

~~~
AmericanChopper
I know a couple of people who permanently negotiated 4 day working weeks after
becoming parents. One of them has his daughter at some sort of parent run day
care, where each of the parents spends one day a week staffing it, so they all
work 4 days (at most) and spend at least one day looking after all the kids.

------
rb808
I once worked with a guy who had 4 children in 5 years. He took a lot of
parental leave, sick days and often slacked off early. As soon as the last
baby was stable he quit for a new job. Companies and teams that are too
generous get shafted.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
Sounds like he's the sort of guy that would work the system no matter what -
he could be an argument against sick days or flexible hours as well.

There will always be people like that, but if the societal good outweighs the
few bad apples, I'd argue that's a plus in general.

~~~
cheesymuffin
Yeah, it's really unfortunate when someone cares more about raising well-
adjusted kids than the Company.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
That's true. Not only is one person being bad not a strong argument for not
endorsing something, but this person could be actually doing good for his
family - caring for his kids or something, and just not sharing the
information.

------
randyrand
It seems very odd to me that parental leave is paid for by companies and not
by taxes/society. It completely messes up incentives.

Should it really be the case that if you're unemployed when you give birth
that you have go a significant time without work?

Or if you start you 1-year leave 5 weeks into a new job that the company has
to pay you for a year?

~~~
duderific
> It seems very odd to me that parental leave is paid for by companies and not
> by taxes/society. It completely messes up incentives.

Indeed. The same could be said for health care.

------
sergers
In Canada you can now take 18 months shared paternal leave.

First 12 months you are entitled to employment insurance which is a certain
percentage of your income.

The next 6 months are unpaid.

Our recent company ethics training had a interesting scenario on maternity
leave discrimination and comments.

Some work places if you are key employee in some aspect entice you with pay,
more flexible working conditions or provided daycare for coming back early.

My company deals with it by hiring contract workers.

Some content could take years to learn, so we recently shifted the core duties
to remaining members and gave the contract worker remedial/administrative
tasks which we all hated any ways.

Overall things still function smoothly

\- however we have an interesting scenario coming up in the next few months
where one employee is retiring and two are going on paternity leave (me being
one, but only taking a month off using vacation as my wife plans To hog the
paternity leave lol... it does make sense financially.

It will be interestinghow my company handles losing 3 key members of a 7
person team(atleast I will be gone a month only)

------
bradlys
Didn't know they had such an extremely generous benefit. 52 weeks of paid time
off is a huge benefit. I think people here are underestimating how huge that
is - it is far better than _any country_. I don't see any countries that offer
100% PTO for parental leave. Most cap it at $XXX/week or some percentage like
50-66% that is a far cry from 100%. (Which I assume still has a true upper
limit but isn't well documented in articles)

Personally, I can't imagine having kids here in the bay area unless I finally
hit big startup riches or get a job at FAANG. A month isn't enough time off
and unemployment is going to be severely financially draining when state
benefits won't even pay half my rent (And the financial burden of health
insurance will probably devour most of that before it even gets to paying rent
anyway). C'est la vie.

~~~
maaaats
Most employers of high-skilled/paid workers in Norway pay the gap between your
current salary and what the government pays.

------
zaroth
Guaranteeing a job opening (and presumably the same position, or at least the
same salary) for a year is a huge ask.

I suppose there are two problems. One is paying partial or full salary during
the leave, and the other is getting a job when you’re ready to return.

The first problem is easy to solve just like unemployment, except that in this
case it’s paid based on voluntary leave. Since companies don’t make the
decision, companies wouldn’t be penalized for having employees take the leave
like they can be with unemployment though.

The second issue of finding a place to work when you’re ready to return is
tricky. It’s absolutely unfair in certain situations for the company and
particularly the specific team for someone to take a year leave and have to
hold their spot. But I also understand you want to minimize friction of
returning to work.

In many cases the person taking leave isn’t doing anything particularly
specialized and it’s a complete non-issue. I don’t know how you might try to
codify how specialized a position is other than a salary cap. For example, if
you’re paid less than $X and the company has over 50 employees, your position
is guaranteed. Over $X or 50 and under employees and you have a job search at
the end of the paid leave.

------
groestl
We (Austria) have up to 1063 days of paid parental leave (paid for by social
security), if both parents decide to take it. It seems our companies manage :)

~~~
bpicolo
> paid for by social security

This seems to be the key in countries with similar policies. You wouldn't see
that system grow in the US as it stands, because companies pay for leave.

------
throwawaysea
I'm fine with this. They have to strike a reasonable and sustainable balance.

Thinking more broadly, I am not sure it makes sense to subsidize having more
children. Sustaining the standard of living we expect today with the
population numbers we have is simply not viable, since those standards carry
heavy externalities.

------
nottorp
Summary: countries with mandatory parental leave have the parents paid at
least partially by those high social security taxes, so it's no problem to
hire a replacement.

If the company has to pay the parental leave _and_ the replacement, it's of
course more difficult.

Easy enough...

------
torpfactory
Isn’t a solution to allow parents to work part time instead of being
completely off or on?

I feel like most people could still make valuable contributions at 50% time,
at least for knowledge workers. Maybe like build up from time off back to full
time over many months?

------
wittedhaddock
They ought to receive overwhelming congratulations and support for testing the
idea

How do we create a culture that totally celebrates the process of
experimentation even if the results from the result test aren't the pie in the
sky we hoped for?

------
tathougies
I am against one-year parental leaves. My wife and I want ten children. That
means ten years off work? How can a company manage? What if I were a less
moral man and got two women pregnant a year? I mean, it's not that difficult.
Even for faithful men, we plan on trying again (last baby born in December) in
a few months. Is it really fair to ask my company to pay for my sex life?

More worryingly, what kind of incentive does this set up? Obviously, it would
force companies to adopt policies that overall reduce the reproduction rate of
society. This can hardly be said to be a good thing. The number of children my
wife and I have should be determined by our ability to support them and our
willingness to have them. I am perfectly able to support children with my
salary, and I'd prefer to spend my time making that salary, rather than having
it handed to us.

Nevertheless, the main reason I am against them is that it removes all
incentives from employers (and government, by extension) to make things better
for parents that are actually _working_. I'd rather have a more flexible
schedule and more vacation than one year of parental leave. Or to live in a
society where only one parent has to work.

~~~
perfmode
Your argument is so convoluted that you were probably better off not saying
anything at all.

It seems like you're starting from a conclusion and providing all of the
things that support your conclusion. Instead, consider all the data and see
what conclusions are revealed.

You haven't conceded a single merit to the counterargument.

~~~
tathougies
I started from a conclusion (that one year parental leave is a good thing) and
then argued it leads to a number of outcomes which I deem unsatisfactory.
Thus, I reject the initial conclusion.

This is a form of argument by contradiction, or reductio ad absurdum. Part of
it, is actually assuming the conclusion and then showing that it contradicts
itself or leads to other unsavoriness.

One criticism of reductio ad absurdum is if the arguer sets up a straw man,
but I'm not sure you've successfully pointed out any straw man in my argument.

~~~
perfmode
Using Latin terms doesn’t change the fact that your argument is intellectually
dishonest.

Name a single, unqualified societal benefit to a one year leave.

~~~
tathougies
> Using Latin terms

Reductio ad absurdum is an English phrase. Derived from Latin certainly, but
it does not require understanding Latin (a language which I do not speak) to
comprehend.

> Name a single, unqualified societal benefit to a one year leave.

You are demanding I argue against my argument as evidence for my own argument?
That seems to me the height of intellectual dishonesty.

A single unqualified social benefit is that people like me would be able to
take many years off work, which I think would just be grand, because I'm
rather lazy and other people paying for tathougies to play with babies sounds
great! Is that a social benefit?

~~~
perfmode
> Intellectual honesty is an applied method of problem solving, characterized
> by an unbiased, honest attitude, which can be demonstrated in a number of
> different ways:

> One's personal faith does not interfere with the pursuit of truth;

> Relevant facts and information are not purposefully omitted even when such
> things may contradict one's hypothesis;

> Facts are presented in an unbiased manner, and not twisted to give
> misleading impressions or to support one view over another;

> References, or earlier work, are acknowledged where possible, and plagiarism
> is avoided.

------
garyrichardson
This is the same level of horseshit as Medical coverage for all and single
payer.

Maybe it wasn’t working the foundation because the US has such a pent up
demand for parental leave that people who want to have families target working
there. My company recently rolled out some pretty sweet parental policies and
lo and behold we have a bunch of people taking advantage of it.

Here in Canada, there is always someone on parental leave. You just deal with
it.

Generally speaking, execs and c levels operate at a different financial level
and parental leave is not as life changing as it is for your typical middle
class worker.

America, get it together and start treating your people with dignity and
respect. You’re a first world country. Your people deserve better.

------
randyrand
My mom had 4 children within 7 years. It's crazy to think someone could be
employed somewhere 7 years and only work 3. You'd have to hire 2.3 people to
get 1 full-time employee!

~~~
Pfhreak
> It's crazy to think someone could be employed somewhere 7 years and only
> work 3.

Alternative take: It's humane to think that someone who had four kids wouldn't
lose their job because they had four kids.

~~~
randyrand
Is it? Having 4 kids is not exactly something anyone _has_ to do. Where we
spend our time is a choice. If someone decides to spend significantly less
time working to raise 4 kids, is it really inhumane to allow the employer to
replace them with someone who wants to spend more time working?

~~~
qgsrw3fd
Actually yes, we definitely must encourage having more kids.

------
tgtweak
I kind of feel, and this is simply based on the personal observations of a few
dozen parental leaves (including a few in my own family) that it's not so much
the duration of time, but the ease back into work that is the important factor
in reaching maximum balance for the family and company. I think 6 months off
(26 weeks) is a good number, but spreadable over 18 months at the will of the
parent. I feel this would make things much better than a cold-cut 6 months
then back into the fire that a traditional 6 month leave would garner. I see a
3 months of full time off, followed with 2 days a week for 3 months, then 3
days for 2 more months before returning in full would be more beneficial to
most companies and families to avoid the "that resource is gone for more than
a quarter and needs to be replaced" conflict that happens during a 6 or 12
month "cold turkey" approach. I've also seen noticeable anxiety in mothers
about returning to the workplace after a 12 month absence, compared to a 3
month.

I see the Canadian system being praised a lot in these comments, and in fact
there are many laudable benefits to the system, but several acute shortcomings
which are often overlooked when touting socialized parental leave. The system
is firstly paid by deductions made to all salaries, which differs from an
employer-paid system where the employer pays the leave. Under the Canadian
system, if a company decides to pay an employee for the period, the government
contributes that much less. This has a chilling effect on companies paying for
leave, where almost all do not since there is no credit to employees working
for a company which offers this, and individuals are still taxed the same on
this portion. Additionally, it is a maximum of 12 months split between the
father and mother, and depending on the duration and the % of father or
mother, is a sliding scale between 50% and 75% of either your trailing salary
for 6 months or a maximum of $60,000 per year, whichever is less. This makes
it very difficult for a single breadwinner to support a family of 3 for a
period of 1 year off of this benefit alone. In the majority of cases I'm
familiar with, those individuals who took their 2 weeks and returned to work
simply because the proposed benefit is not enough to pay the bills, thereby
forfeiting tax benefits that they paid for and will continue to pay towards
for the rest of their salaried life. And while you do stop contributing to
this for the year once you pass $60,000 in pay for the year, there is no
"exemption" if you don't use it and certainly no "payout" if you don't. In
addition to this, you are taxed at your marginal tax % on any benefits you
receive from this program, making it even less palatable for someone in a high
tax bracket looking to take several months of leave. Someone in this tax
bracket is usually working in a role that requires specialized knowledge or
skills and are by that very nature harder to replace/restaff - even looking
away from the impact to the company, taking that leave in many cases results
in making some career sacrifices for that parent. A 3 month fully paid leave
(to both parents) with no tax deduction would be preferable to the current
system in almost all cases I've seen.

