Sure. When the Government of Canada did consultations around the parental leave changes, there was a wide group, including the CFIB, the Chamber of Commerce, and the health groups, who all told them that this was not a change that would help families or that would make it easier for businesses to have their employees go on leave. We presented other changes that would be better, such as adding specific leave for the father, making EI more accessible, those types of things.
The 55% of your pay is already a barrier for low-income families to take the whole year, so they're not going to have access to the 33%. That's simply not enough to live on if you're a low-income family.
Also, the family low-income supplement has not increased since it was introduced. It's completely phased out at a family income of $25,000 a year. I would recommend you look at the low-income family supplement on EI as well as other options for improving maternity and parental leave, specifically QPIP. If we wanted to make the program more accessible and work better for families, we'd look at what's happening in Quebec.
Child care is a necessary component of that, as well. That's very often what was driving the complaints. Parents would say that they couldn't find child care for one-year-olds, which then would lead us to the case where you can't modify it. If you can find child care at 14 months and your employer can give you leave for 14 months, that doesn't give you the flexibility to be able to go back at 14 months. You have to choose either a year or a year and a half. That doesn't offer a huge amount of flexibility for workers or families. We think this is not a good modification; it just isn't.