Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to be able to address the House tonight and highlight the Conservative push for more flexible parental leave. We recognize and celebrate those who are doing the hard work of having and raising children, and also, we note the sad fact that many people report in polls that they would like to have more children than for whatever reason their circumstances have allowed them to have. The self-reported desired number of children in Canada is much higher than the number of children people are actually having, and I think there are a number of factors contributing to that.
One of them is that it is so much harder to find a job and afford a home today that young people are hitting some of those milestones associated with starting life in a family much later, which leaves them with less time available to live out some of these personal goals, but also, the parental leave system simply has not kept up with the reality of more people working and also of more flexible work being available. Today it is much more possible for people to, for instance, continue working part time or take more flexible leave from home, because technology allows remote work, flexible work, odd hours work, etc.
This is a reality that I see among many people around, including in my own family. My wife is a doctor, she has a medical practice and she sees her patients virtually from our home office at flexible hours that work for our family and that work for her. This is not that unique an example. There are many people doing this, but the parental leave system has simply not kept up.
In a constructive spirit, Conservatives have put forward constructive proposals for more flexible parental leave, and we have asked the government to consider adopting these proposals. I am following up on a question I asked about this earlier. So far we have not heard from the government yet on whether it wants to adopt these proposals. Again, we are putting them forward in a positive, hopeful, constructive spirit, in hopes that the government will embrace these good ideas and consider other ones to make parental leave more flexible.
We are proposing, first of all, flexible parental leave, allowing parents to pause and then resume their leave, provided that this pausing and resuming stays within an 18-month window. This is similar to the existing model in Quebec. In Quebec, parents are able to pause and then resume their leave, which means potentially that if someone is in more seasonal work, if their spouse is able to take some time off with the children or if they really need that extra money for a period of time, they can return to work, but then resume their leave. This is valuable for individuals, but also can be valuable for employers if they want to offer employees the opportunity to return to work for a period of time when they are very busy. I can think of a lot of different kinds of professions where there are particularly busy seasons.
We are calling for that interruptibility, which currently is available in Quebec, to be available in the rest of the country as well.
Second, we are calling for learning on leave to be available, so that a person would have the clear ability to take courses and to study. Likely from home or in a flexible way, they would be able to take courses or advance their studies while they are on parental leave.
Third is a caregiving exception to EI parental leave benefit clawbacks. This would allow somebody who is on leave watching their own child to also offer paid child care to neighbours, family members, etc. Effectively, if someone is caring for their own children, they could also at the same time care for someone else's children and be paid to do that without facing the kind of benefit clawbacks that would otherwise apply.
These are three reasonable proposals that would have other benefits that would allow people to develop themselves professionally. Increasing the availability of local and flexible child care would create opportunities for more economic vitality, including for self-employed individuals, by allowing that pausing and resuming to respond to the natural cycles that happen within families as well as within work.
These are constructive proposals, and we would love to hear if the government is interested in adopting all or some of them going forward.