An evaluation of a federal benefit to help parents take time off work to care for critically ill children says fewer people have used it than expected because they didn’t know about it or didn’t understand how it worked. Annual applications for the benefit, delivered through the employment insurance system, have been well below the […]
The ways that Canadians partner up is changing, leading to questions about how different types of families access parental benefits. “When we think about Canada, and we think about families, we think about diversity,” said Nora Spinks, chief executive officer of the Vanier Institute of the Family, in a webinar on Tuesday. “And we want to make sure […]
The number of people who received regular employment insurance benefits increased by 4,400 in February, a rise of one per cent since January, according to new data from Statistics Canada. Most of the increase was observed among those employed in manufacturing and utilities, which rose 4.7 per cent, while there was a smaller increase of 1.6 […]
Providing income support for a year to people who are too sick to work would cost the federal government $1 billion more than its current program, the parliamentary spending watchdog said Thursday. As is, the benefit available through employment insurance covers just over half of a worker’s earnings for 15 weeks, and nearly four in […]
With the federal government’s new employment insurance parental sharing benefit taking effect in a couple of weeks, employers are being advised to prepare for the changes. “Employers will need to be ready to adapt to a new reality should new parents collectively decide to avail themselves of the new shared parental leave EI benefits,” says Adrian Jakibchuk, partner […]
An internal government survey of people who used federal sickness benefits has found that nearly half were unable to work for longer than the 15 weeks the benefits last. The newly released documents detailing the results from a survey of people who did — and did not — claim employment insurance sickness benefits showed that of those […]
With a baby due in March, Ashley Bangsund and her partner Nick Goodall didn’t think twice about whether to take the traditional 12 months of employment insurance parental benefits or opt for the new 18-month extended version introduced by the federal government in December 2017. “The longer leave feels too long to go with a […]