Thank you. That's a great question.
The first thing I would say is that the really frustrating thing about studying parental leave is the lack of comprehensive data. When we started working with the statistics from EI we were told that the statistics were for Quebec and the rest of Canada and then somewhere along in the fine print it was that actually we don't have data on the three territories or for people living on reserves. So we don't actually have any data on indigenous Canadians who live on reserve or indigenous Canadians living in the three territories, in terms of their access to these programs. For us that was one of the most shocking revelations of working with the statistics. So my first point is that we need to learn more.
My second point is on parental leave. I'll talk about parental leave and maternity leave benefits because that's the area I've been working on for quite a while. Their being lodged in the EI program means that they are available for people who are in standardized employment. By design, they exclude all of the people you're talking about. As I said, we don't have good data. Also, the data we do have is not aggregated for indigenous Canadians living in cities.
If longer term we redesign parental leave and maternity leave policies.... European countries have zero. They have flat rates by which they give a certain amount of money to new mothers, to new parents. In Sweden there's no minimal contribution or pay that a Swede has to earn in order to qualify for parental leave benefits. I think we need to rethink this as a care policy. It's not an unemployment policy. The way it's designed it only supports people who are in standardized employment. It doesn't support all of the people you are talking about. They don't have access to child care and they don't have access to parental leave benefits. I think we need to think about a redesign and think about child benefits and family supplements in the same package.