From EI to Daycare: Navigating Parental Leave in Canada

Thinking about taking parental leave in Canada?

In this episode of DemograFix Cara Stern talks with Jasmine Steffler (from Walkable Parenthood and Oh The Urbanity!) about her experience navigating parental leave. From understanding benefits and income replacement to finding childcare, building community, and adjusting to life with a new baby, Cara and Jasmine know what it takes to grow a family in Canada.

If you're expecting a child or planning a family, this conversation covers many of the practical questions parents have before taking leave:

✅ How parental leave and EI benefits work in Canada

✅ The difference between 12- and 18-month leave options

✅ Why Quebec's parental leave system is different

✅ How much income you can expect while on leave

✅ Finding daycare and understanding childcare costs

✅ Building community and avoiding isolation during leave

✅ Life with a baby in a walkable city without owning a car

✅ What we wish we knew before taking leave

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction to Canadian Parental Leave

00:48 Understanding Parental Leave Policies

02:29 Choosing the Length of Leave

02:51 The Quebec Parental Insurance Plan vs. Other Provinces

05:08 Navigating the Childcare System

06:15 Financial Challenges and Income Replacement

07:50 Walking and Cycling Without a Car

10:19 Finding Community During Parental Leave

12:50 Lessons Learned and Future Considerations

15:55 Traveling with a Young Child

16:49 Conclusion and Outro

Research/links:

The effect of leave policies on increasing fertility: a systematic review | Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01270-w

(PDF) Does Parental Leave Affect Fertility and Return-to-Work? Evidence from a "True Natural Experiment" 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5135837_Does_Parental_Leave_Affect_Fertility_and_Return-to-Work_Evidence_from_a_True_Natural_Experiment

The Daily — Fertility and baby names, 2024 

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/250924/dq250924d-eng.htm

Hosted by Mike Moffatt & Cara Stern & Sabrina Maddeaux

Produced by Meredith Martin

Funded by the Neptis Foundation https://neptis.org/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Since Canada expanded employment insurance parental leave from 10 weeks to 35 weeks in 2000, and Quebec launched its own provincial parental insurance plan in 2006, the share of new mothers taking leave has consistently been around three-quarters. So say what you will about Canada, but when it comes to pregnancy and parental leave, we do a lot right. Our policies are popular, they're widely used, and they're among the most generous in the world. But of course, that doesn't mean they're perfect. Today, we're joined by Jasmine Staffler, who you might recognize from YouTube channel Oh the Urbanity, and who now writes a substack called Walkable Parenthood. She's here to talk about her experiencing navigating parental leave, what surprised her along the way, and where she thinks Canada could be improved. Demographics, hosted by Mike Moffat and Kara Stern. First of all, thanks so much for joining us. I'm so happy to have you, Jasmine.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

What did you know about the parental leave policies before you got pregnant?

SPEAKER_00 0:53

I generally knew you get about a year of maternity leave, but I think I had a lot of confusion around exactly what that looked like in terms of how many payments you got, how long you get EI payments, and how that fits with how much leave you can take from work. Sparks Notes version in Canada, you can take up to 18 months of parental leave, but the uh payments only go up to about a year. So you can choose to take beyond 12 months, um, but that is essentially unpaid. So yeah, I think that was uh one of my biggest confusions how that works beyond just um generally figuring out figuring out personally, like when to take leave, when you're financially stable enough to take leave, um, when you feel like it's a good time at work, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Yeah, it's it's a thing that wasn't intuitive to me either, the fact that it's like two separate systems where you've got your protected leave, which is one part of the system, and then you've got your employment insurance, or in Quebec, it's their own program, but you've got basically employment and insurance for parental leave over that period of time. And those are two separate things. So one thing that I heard and the advice I got was no matter how much time you're planning to take over 12 months, always say you want to take 12 months so that you get that amount of money in those first 12 months rather than spread it over 18, because it gives you the flexibility that you can then extend unpaid for up to six months, but at least you don't lose and leave money on the table if you decide to come back a little bit earlier than 18 months. It's not that simple of a system, which is a little frustrating. Yeah, deciding when to take leave. That's something that, like, what did you decide to do?

SPEAKER_00 2:30

Yeah, so I ended up taking um 14 months, which seemed like a good kind of compromise between, yeah, a little bit more than a year, but not the full amount of time because yeah, I just didn't quite feel like I could justify um being away from work that long. And I think the financial strain would have been a bit, a bit too much for that, for that amount of time.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

And go back though, you guys have a better system in the sense of the income replacement part of it, right? Because I know in Ontario and in most provinces, you end up basically getting the same as what you'd get if you were on EI. It is for the EI system. So you get 55% and it's capped at about 55% of your salary up to somewhere in around $60,000. It changes every year. And so for a lot of people, especially if like if you're a middle class family, like you're probably taking a significant pay cut. Like at least it's gonna be no matter where you are, it's gonna be 55% at best. You're gonna lose 45% of your income. But for a lot of people, it's a lot more than that. For you, it was different in Quebec, though, right? Like they have a higher income replacement rate. Is that how it works differently, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That was um a pleasant surprise when we were going through all this research. Quebec has closer to um a 65% income replacement rate, it works out to. I think you get like a higher percentage the first part of your leave and then it goes down. So it averages to about 65. So yeah, comparing that to 55% in the rest of Canada is actually pretty significant. Like when you think about um, yeah, what that would look like in terms of money in your in your bank. And then it's yeah, it kind of gets better than that as your income increases, I guess, because Quebec doesn't have the same cap. So Quebec now, your income can be up to 103,000 is the income ceiling. So you'll get 65% of that if you make that much, which most of us don't, but it's it's a pretty big difference.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

That's huge. Like I wonder how much that impacts how comfortable people are. I know that Quebec is, at least in eastern Canada, I believe it's the highest fertility rate. I wonder how much of a role this plays. How much of this did you consider?

SPEAKER_00 4:36

I think it was a pretty big consideration, just doing the calculations and and figuring out the difference. And yeah, it wasn't it wasn't only that, but it definitely made a big difference for like imagining what our lifestyle would be like the year I'm off and and things like that. Um, and just seemed a bit more attainable than it would elsewhere. It wasn't just that though. Like I think in um that in combination with knowing that like Quebec has a pretty strong subsidized daycare system and looking ahead to things like that helped too.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

Oh my gosh, your the daycare system is seems so much more robust than in Ontario. I know that for here you end up like calling all the daycares and having to like basically follow up. And sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and it's very frustrating, especially if you're like someone who isn't so comfortable calling and and bugging people and saying, Hey, I really need a spot. Can you help me out? Because I understand in Quebec it's a centralized system, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Yes, exactly. It's a pretty easy system, and there are just so many more available spots. So, like, yeah, there's still like that, you know, you're you're competing for for your ideal spot still, but it's just not such a such a hunger game thing thing because there just is more availability. It's not rewarding like the the richest and most organized people as much as I think it is in other provinces.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Yeah, and that's kind of nice. It's a much fairer system because a lot of people don't know how to navigate the system, especially if it's your first kid. And in first kid, you don't have any like sibling priority that a lot of people get when it's their second or third kid. When it comes to the like the amount that you get, one thing that like for me, and when the first kid, I was kind of thinking about how like, we'll just figure it out. I knew that I had at the time like a top-up through work for the first four months. And I think that that is something that it some people have, big companies often offer that, but a lot of Canadian employees work for small businesses. A lot of them don't have any top-up. And so it's a huge, huge hit. And so once you experience one parental leave, you know exactly like how dire the situation can be to your budget. Like, there's there's no way to avoid thinking about this when deciding whether to have another kid because it it's going to affect your income. I heard before from a financial planner one time, like if you are not going in the red during Matt Leave, like that is a huge success. That's that's all you're aiming for. Is and a lot of people can't even do that. And it makes sense because cost of living is really high and the the amount you get is not that high.

SPEAKER_00 7:04

It really disincentivizes um middle and lower income people from having kids. Like, I think it's just like a a huge barrier. If obviously if you're a bit better off, you just have more capacity to have one of one partner be off for a year or two years, and it doesn't hurt you that much. Like maybe you're you're reducing your investments, maybe you're not going on as many trips as you would normally. But for lower middle income people, um, like that's a it's actually it actually can be a very big hit to your lifestyle. We're in the, I don't know, maybe advantageous short-term position of not owning a home, not having a mortgage, not having a car. If you do have those big regular monthly expenses, it seems like almost impossible if you're a middle income person.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Yeah, I was thinking about to ask you if you if you're one of the people who decided once you have a kid, you have to get a car. Because I was like, that would be very off-brand for you guys. But I, you know, I wondered about that because a lot of people feel like it is a necessity when you have a kid, right? I know that you're you have a substack that talks about all the ways you get around the city without a car and what your experience is like. Can you tell a bit about what your experience has been with that?

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Yeah, so we don't have like um a strong opposition to ever getting a car, but we did want to see how long we can go um and how how it goes having a baby or a kid now with um without a car. And I mean, there are some areas that that can definitely be improved in Montreal. Montreal has pretty good transit, um, but they are really lacking on accessibility on the metro. Um, I think I don't know the exact figure, but it seems like it's like 10% or or less of stations are accessible. And I think Toronto is a lot higher. So that has has been a challenge. It definitely makes us take the bus more than the metro, which which has been has been fine. It just does kind of um limit your options in a way that full accessibility wouldn't. Like we'll, if we want to go somewhere, we'll, you know, walk to the closest metro station, and that might be a 20, 30 minute walk uh just to get the elevator. So it's uh definitely add some complications. But other than that, um, like we we do live in a walkable area, so we can do our day-to-day needs on foot.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

And it's yeah, it's been mostly fine. How old was your baby when you first took him on a bike?

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Yeah, he was um, well, I guess the technically the first time was he was around eight months, but he was in a car seat, uh, in a cargo bike. But when we really got got him on it more often was when he was about, I guess, 14, 15 months. It was finally not winter in Montreal, and he had good head and neck control. So we uh yeah, we have we have a bike seat for him now. That's been great too, um, for kind of being able to do similar, similar rides that we did before.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Will you be taking him in the winter?

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Good question. I think that'll be that'll have to be a discussion for later, but yeah, yeah, we uh we're definitely a lot more cautious uh when we take him him out, but maybe we'll get there.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Ben just wanted to thinking about going back to the parental leave side of it because like yeah, like you spent a lot of time on parental leave. How did you find navigating like just understanding not just the systems on how to collect the payments for it, but how did you understand like how to integrate into the community of people who are also on parental leave, like find kind of the people who have kids the same age? What did you do?

SPEAKER_00 10:20

I actually found it kind of challenging. I think when you're in the first, I don't know, it's all kind of a blur, but the first three or three to five months of having a baby, um, you're you're you know, you're so preoccupied with the baby, you're spending so much time taking care of them and worrying about them and Googling things that uh yeah, your main focus isn't really um building community, even though it's maybe the thing you most need. So I think, but but by the time I was out of that sort of newborn period, uh, then I was really like actively trying to find things. There are a good amount of community groups and classes to take here, but I found you have to put like a decent amount of research into finding them. There wasn't like a centralized, good centralized place. Um it was a lot of patchwork finding things to do and people to meet. I think it took like a year to to find like a good group of um of people uh it near me, like in my in my area too. Like I found that was a bit of a challenge, especially not owning a car, how important it is to have people that are within, I don't know, walking distance, um, or at least not super far. So you can see them regularly, it uh makes it easier to keep in contact.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

There's kind of this ratio between how much you like them and how close they live. And it and and that just has to be a happy ratio. And as long as they live nearby, it's like if they're decent enough people, like you spend time with them, even though sometimes the only thing you have in common is being a mom. But it's you know what? Like sometimes that's all you need when you're you're on parental leave and trying to find your people. It can be tough, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Yes. Yeah, exactly. Getting that human interaction regularly um can be pretty important um because I think it can be pretty isolating if you don't have that, especially if you don't have um like family or um a pre-built network right around you.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Oh, yeah, because you live far from your family. So I guess you had to kind of build that community where you are, right? Like it's a tough thing. I know in Ontario, one of the things they offer is early on, where they have like these programs where you can go and drop in and get to meet other people who are on parental leave. And that's something that it was like a it was a huge benefit to me when I was off because I was like able to find the local ones and talk to people there. And it's scary because you're talking to people and you're also trying to navigate going out with your kid for the first time. How do I go on my own and navigate sometimes through stairs and things like that? It's it can be a challenge, but it's such a nice thing that the government finances, and I'm so grateful for it. And I always tell everyone who's going on parental leave, look for your local early on if you're in Ontario, because they're all over the place and they're they're all individually run. So they're a little bit different. If you don't like the one you go to, try another one. When it comes to going on parental leave, what's something you wish you understood before you went on parental leave?

SPEAKER_00 12:50

I think beyond understanding the basics of yeah, how much money you're entitled to, how um much leave you can take, and figuring out what works best for you. And yeah, and I think like really think really thinking about what works best for you, like not just assuming that you you have to take only 12 months or you have to take only 18 months, like it's pretty idiosyncratic. And I think you have to kind of be honest about your with yourself about, you know, do you do how long do you really want to spend spend with a baby? Like it's rare, it's rewarding, but it's also it can be really hard and it's uh it's a very different type of job.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Yeah, and it's okay to not know that ahead of time, I think. I think some people think that they'll it they will enjoy it a lot more than they actually do. So like I guess that's where the flexibility comes in of being able to change. And I really appreciate that they don't lock you into a certain amount of time when you take when you take parental leave.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

And then beyond that, like thinking um thinking beyond uh when you're or 18 months of leave and um thinking about like what what infrastructure and services and things exist around you to yeah, to support you beyond that. More of us are are living a more um individualistic lives, and that's become more normal, I think, than it was in the past. I think we we need more more than ever community groups and then also, yeah, thinking about services. Like, for example, we knew that we would have $9 a day subsidized daycare, which is like almost unbelievable that that's that that's a thing. But like that was a we knew that that would be a big help for us and would allow us to not be, yeah, not be struggling so much after the year of leave and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Yeah, now that that's the case, I always heard that sub that childcare was such a big expense, and I know it was before this program came in. I started my first kid in daycare right as the program came in. So our deposit was, I think it was $2,300 for the month. And then what we actually paid was more like a thousand a month, and it was just went down from there. Now it's around $450. And if you can access the spaces, it's such a benefit. Like it's it's so amazing what it does. And so what ends up being is that a year off, I think, is probably the most significant cost in the early years because it's just like the loss of income, the loss of momentum at work, and like sometimes losing connections if you take too long off. I know that I was reading about what's what kinds of things have worked for helping people feel more comfortable having as many kids as they'd like to. And what I found was that if you extend how long they're off, that doesn't always work at beyond a year. About a year seems to be the sweet point, where after that, like some countries tried doing two years and three years and then pulled it back to 18 months, and it was like they didn't find it made a big difference. But what makes a big difference is that income replacement, because that's something that like it just makes it impossible to make ends meet, especially in such a high cost of living country.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

You need to have kind of already decided you want to have kids and then you're gonna figure out how to make it work. But if you're kind of someone on the fence and you're not sure, I think um our programs don't necessarily do enough to make it look super appealing.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

You recently took a trip with your kid. Oh, you said kid. I still think he's a baby. He's only three weeks older than mine, and mine's still a baby, so yours is still a baby. Um what was that like?

SPEAKER_00 15:52

You know, it was different than than traveling before, like Europe traveling before a kid, but I think it was like better than we than we thought it would be. It takes a lot of prep more prep work, just like you do at home, but and you kind of have to maybe uh temper your expectations a little bit, like you you expect to cover less of the city every day. But yeah, entirely doable. I don't know how how it's uh how much harder it gets when when we're fully in toddler mode, but entirely doable with a about 18-month-old.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

So that's awesome. Yeah, I guess it'll it'd be different to see how they change. There's always like something new that's great and something new that's horrible. Uh that's my experience, anyways. And I only have a four-year-old. I don't know if it changes as I get older, but as something changes, I'm like, I'm so sad this phase is over. And also, thank goodness that phase is over.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Yeah. Everything's better sweet. For sure.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Thanks so much for joining us. I really appreciate you taking the time to come here today.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Thank you everyone for watching and listening. And thanks so much to our producer, Meredith Martin, and her editor, Sean Foreman. And if you have any questions about putting a baby on a bike, send them our way, missing middle podcast at gmail.com. And we'll see you next time.