[anthonylukach]

Agreed. In Canada, a woman or man can take up to 18 months of paid leave (although, if you take over 12 months, you'll be getting the same absolute amount of money but just spread over the extra months) to care for a new child. Your employer, by law, is obligated to hold your job for your return (provided that you were an FTE). The money you receive is simply collecting unemployment. It's money that the employee paid into the system, so it's hard to scoff at their right to utilize it. Like other unemployment benefits, you need to have been employed to access this money. To be competitive, some employers choose to "top up" the pay to a certain percentage of your full time wage (for some or all of your leave), but that's just a perk that employers can opt to offer.

I think this policy is entirely reasonable and entirely reasonable. The side effect is that there are often "matt-leave" openings at companies (i.e. covering for someone while they're away), which is a good way to get to know a job on a temporary basis and for employers to get to know a hire without a long term commitment.

[yurymik]

It's better than the alternative, but still far from perfect. Unemployment benefit is supposed to provide you a safe net should your employment lapsed - so no one really expects that you would maintain the same quality of living. If push comes to shove you can and will cut all the excess (entertainment, dinning out, traveling), leaving with just bare necessities.

Now, with the parental leave, when your expenses rise (diapers, formulas, cloths, ...) you're expected to make do on the same barebone salary replacement. I've experienced this myself quite recently: I had a choice to take parental leave and get a huge pay cut, or just burn through all accumulated vacation time and get back to work early.

Currently, Service Canada web site says that "maximum yearly insurable earnings amount is $53,100" - which cuts your income 3-4 fold you choose to stay at home. I think many high-earners (read: more that 53k) would rather choose to have more deductions throughout the year, but have 70-80-100% matched.

[anthonylukach]

Yeah, it's definitely not a perfect system. I say this as my wife is currently on maternity leave. We've definitely adjusted our budget and had to plan accordingly.

The biggest point that I try to make when describing the system is that it's not a government handout, it's just an extension of unemployment insurance.

The idea of increasing deductions to bring up EI values seems reasonable, although I imagine it could be a hard sell for men who never intend to use it (not saying that's a reason to not do it, however I'm sure there would be opposition). An opt-in system could be better, but then that kind of goes against the idea of insurance (you'd likely only opt in if you knew you'd be needing it and it'd be advantageous to do so). I guess the argument against the idea would be "just save your money instead" which would bring us right back to where we are today.