[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.