I just want to start by saying thank you to the Chair and the committee for having me here today. My perspective is going to be a little different from the ones you've seen from other people.
My name is Allison Venditti. I'm a certified HR professional and a certified HR leader. I have over 20 years of HR experience in most industries, from logging to manufacturing to retail to health care. I've seen most different programs that have been rolled out. In addition to recruitment and retention, I have and will continue to develop leave programs. My expertise lies in short-term, long-term and parental leave.
I will say that helping someone go on maternity leave is one of the highlights of my job. You get to have a party, everybody gets excited, we hire a replacement and we wait with bated breath so that we can send an email to everybody when they tell us the baby is here.
If that part is the highlight, I will tell you that getting a phone call from someone that they've lost a baby is the exact opposite. After getting that phone call and having to let the team know and the people you've worked with for 20 years know, everybody is saying, “What do we do?” We don't know.
Supporting someone who is not only grieving, but also having to navigate where they fit in is very difficult and not something that HR has the power to do. Helping someone decide whether they go on sick leave benefits or how they want to manage them—even if they call us—is not something we are able to do. As an HR professional, I can only guide employees.
Many workplaces do not have short- and long-term disability, though I'm glad to see that Ms. Hamill's does. That is not an option for a lot of employees.
Currently when someone loses a baby, as you've heard, they're removed from maternity leave and asked to move to EI sickness benefits. For many people, that involves having to go in person to a Service Canada location, along with phone calls, reporting, answering questions and updating your employer. Then there's not knowing if you're going to be accepted into these leaves and having to report every two weeks why you are still on sick leave benefits. Having to tell someone every two weeks that your baby has died is completely unnecessary and cruel.
If the paperwork isn't done correctly, the employer has to try to coach the employee. If it isn't done, we have to make a phone call to them to say that they're no longer on approved leave, and we have to figure out how to bring them back. The replacement has questions, managers don't know what to do and nobody knows what to say.
I have spent hundreds of hours trying to make sure that our valuable employees continue to feel valued and trying to make sure that this works for them and they indeed come back to us, which is what we want. This bill fixes that. Pure and simple, it fixes that. As a bill for parents, it's the right move; as a bill for employees, it's the right move; and as a bill for employers, I'm telling you it is the right move.
I want to spend my time making workplaces better. I want to spend my time making workplaces more efficient and more human, and this bill will let me do that.
Thank you.