We have read some of the presentations that have been made to you already, in particular the presentation from the Canadian Labour Congress and Richard Shillington's presentation. Both spoke about maternity and parental benefits for the self-employed. Mr. Shillington referred to the Canadian Bar Association's study on maternity benefits for self-employed. He also spoke about the program that they now have in the province of Quebec that allows the self-employed to access maternity and parental benefits.
We know that you're starting to accumulate a lot of information, a lot of statistics, and even more today with Leah's presentations, so we thought that we would talk about what this situation means in human terms. We will try to put a face on what it means when a woman who runs her own business or is self-employed cannot access EI benefits to stay home with a newborn.
I mentioned earlier that I run my own business. One of the projects that I worked on in 2002-03 was an Atlantic-wide study on access to EI maternity/parental benefits for self-employed and business-owning women.
We had a team of women who did focus groups across the Atlantic region. The research was funded by Status of Women Canada back in the days when Status of Women Canada funded research.
I did half a dozen focus groups in New Brunswick. I did them in both languages, and I did them in rural and urban parts of the province. I'd like to tell you about some of the women I met.
There is the 35-year-old hairdresser who runs her own salon. After 14 years without a holiday, she took three weeks off and had a baby. She breastfed for those three weeks. Then, as she said, she had to “dry up” and get back to work. She mourned not being able to breastfeed that newborn for the next six months.
There is the massage therapist, also 35, who runs her own clinic. She has six employees. All of them are able to access EI because she pays into the fund on their behalf, as do they. They can stay home for a year with a newborn. She can't.
There is the 40-year-old psychologist who also runs her own counselling clinic. She didn't intend to get pregnant, but these things happen. Because of her age, both she and the baby had serious problems. She almost died, in fact, giving birth. She was at home for months with the newborn with no income coming into the household. When she was finally able to get her clinic going again, she had to rebuild her clientele.
A photographer whose business depends on her creativity already had a 10-year-old and got pregnant. She built up a massive debt on her line of credit as she tried to juggle two children--one a newborn--and keep the business going.
We heard horror stories all across the region, stories of hairdressers back on their feet all day, a week after having a baby, because they could not afford not to be on their feet cutting hair; of new mothers, business owners, running up massive debt trying to keep the business alive; of women deciding not to have children or not to have more children because they couldn't afford to.
Perhaps most sad is the situation of the newborn baby who doesn't have the right, as a lot of newborns do, to have that most important person close to them for the first year of life, because one or both of their parents is self-employed.
These women all said the same things. They make a contribution to the economy, to their local community. They hire people. They create jobs. Their employees can stay home for a year with a newborn, but they can't. It is a question of fairness. It is a question of social justice.
We talk a lot in this country about our aging population and about the need to attract more immigrants. We would suggest that there are women in this country who would have babies or would have more babies if our social support system were more family-friendly. Sadly, in a lot of instances--this is definitely one--our support system is not family-friendly.
We know that in September of 2008, during the last federal election campaign, Prime Minister Harper announced that a re-elected Conservative government would give self-employed Canadians the opportunity to access maternity and parental benefits. Going through some of my papers in preparing this, I found this news release that came out on September 15, which I would just like to read to you, because it quotes the Prime Minister, who said,
Self-employed Canadians--and those who one day hope to be--shouldn't have to choose between starting a family and starting a business because of government policy. They should be able to pursue their dreams--both as entrepreneurs and as parents.
We want the Prime Minister to know that we totally agree with him. We know that in January of this year, he announced that he would set up an expert panel to study the issue. We hope that this is not just another way of stalling. BPW Canada is not alone in this. We are not saying anything different from what a lot of equality-seeking groups are saying—that the time has come to make maternity parental benefits available to the self-employed and to business owners.