Both the compassionate leave program and the maternity and parental benefit programs are not well designed because they live within an EI program that's talking about unemployment and labour force attachment, both of those programs. You can understand politically why it happened. In some sense it was cheap money and there was money that was a surplus anyway, so you could add it there without increasing taxes anywhere else. My preference would be a totally separate program outside of EI. If that's not feasible, then, yes, you could add the self-employed within EI if there could be a way to do that. But I think a totally separate program, which means you could design it....
A small critical point. Even in the Quebec plan they are still clawing back earnings from people who are receiving maternity benefits. I do not understand the argument for this at all, particularly if you're going to include self-employed people. I've been self-employed for most of my career. Many of the people who are self-employed receiving maternity benefits are going to want to work part time. Especially if they're self-employed and have their own business, they want to stay attached to their business. To have a program that says deductions are going to be made dollar for dollar from any earnings they receive while on maternity benefits, it escapes me what the argument for that would be, unless you go back to the EI world where you say this will help till they get working, and if they're working, we're going to take that benefit away. But in the context of maternity benefits, this is your money, use it how it suits you, with as much flexibility as a bureaucracy can tolerate to suit the needs of individuals. Even Quebec is still doing the clawbacks, which I don't think serves a useful purpose.