There is the flexibility in terms of adjusting your benefit rate and the duration. There's a higher dollar value. It has three benefit categories: the maternity benefit, which can only be taken by the mother; the parental benefit, like in EI, which can be taken by either; and the paternity benefit that can only be taken by males, which is what I would assume is the major reason the male uptake is so much higher.
There are two reasons. One, there's that one benefit that only they can take. If you don't use it, it's gone. The second is that because the maximum benefits are so much higher--double, $800-some per week--than the EI benefit, males who usually have higher incomes will lose less by taking advantage of that.
Also, there's no two-week waiting period. It has been a total mystery to me for years as to why we have a “deductible” of two weeks for getting benefits because you're having a baby. It's as if we want to punish people for making the mistake of getting pregnant.
You'll notice that in the employer plan for the public sector in Ottawa there's no two-week waiting period. Again, why would we have this? We have it because it's embedded in an employment insurance program that has lots of focus on deductibility and determining labour force attachment.