Those are really good questions.
Let me start by saying that we who work in child care policy don't see it as a free-standing policy. It needs to be supported by better parental leave policy and better policies for families overall. That's because child care is an important piece of family policy, but it's not the only piece. I really appreciate your putting it into that context.
I've always seen parental leave policy as going hand in hand with child care policy. When you read reports by UNICEF, for example, they do make the point that countries that have good parental leave policy also tend to have good child care policy, and that they go hand in hand.
I responded to the consultation on parental leave. I said that parental leave policy is really important because, in reality, we don't really see tiny babies in child care centres unless the families really want and need to do that. We don't see it being a widespread solution to what families do, though. They need to have family time. I think this is quite consistent with what other people have said.
I have always thought that parental leave policy needs to be more flexible. However, if you look at the way it's now set up, it's also very inequitable. The reason it's really inequitable—it's been declared ineffective parental leave policy by organizations like UNICEF, for example—is because it pays so low and because so many women and men are excluded from it. It also is very heavily weighted towards women taking the leave, which disadvantages them, especially if it goes on for a long time.
To keep this really concise, flexibility is important, but flexibility needs to go along with the money that will pay for the parent, the mother, to make the choice to stay at home. I would recommend that, yes, we need to make it more flexible, and not necessarily longer. Flexibility is different from length. Some women or men might like to take it for shorter or longer.
We would like to see earmarked father leave to encourage fathers to enter into caring for their children at a younger age.
We think it needs to be redesigned to make more women and men eligible, as they are in Quebec where it pays much more and the amount of earning is much lower. It needs to cover more kinds of workers—Quebec has already included self-employed workers.
To keep this in one sentence, I support the idea of more flexible parental leave, but I don't think the way it's being pursued by the government is the right way to do it. I think that will make it more inequitable, and I would argue that it should be done in a different way.