Human Resources committee  I could certainly provide a few comments. First of all, roughly one-third of those who are self-employed are females. There is certainly a large number of women out there who can potentially benefit from this, be it for the maternity and parental benefits or for the sickness and

Human Resources committee  I think there was significant background work done in the early part of 2009 and the early summer of 2009. The bulk of the policy work, when we were given clear directions on what this was to look like, was done in the middle to latter part of the summer and the early part of the

Human Resources committee  Yes, it is.

Human Resources committee  Within Canada, no. These types of benefits are not provided in other provinces--only in Quebec.

Human Resources committee  Are you talking about special benefits or all benefits?

Human Resources committee  There are some examples in the world where they have this type of system, but they are very few and far between. Generally the self-employed are not able to access many benefits, if we look at our international studies. Would you like to add anything, Louis?

Human Resources committee  The focus was on providing the special benefits on a voluntary basis. The focus was initially on maternity and parental and then was broadened to also look at sickness and compassionate benefits. The work really did focus on that.

Human Resources committee  If I may, we did considerable work in looking at the international experience with this type of system. I think what we see is that it's very rare to find a system like that just because of all the logistics challenges. As the minister said, it's very difficult to know when someb

Human Resources committee  I think there are a lot of complexities there in terms of how to determine the reason that the income went down. Is it because of reduced effort? Is it because of creative accounting? Is it because of an exogenous factor, such as an economic downturn? I think that's what the in

Human Resources committee  In terms of designing this program, I think right at the outset it was made very clear that the government had made a commitment to make this voluntary. I think the minister explained the logic that not everybody would want to sign up for this and that it might be considered just

Human Resources committee  I think roughly...it depends on how many people join. As I said, I think we have a very firm number of how many people we think will join for maternity and parental benefits. The numbers work out to roughly $200 million of benefits, I think. It's approximately that. Again, the pr

Human Resources committee  No, I wouldn't go that--

Human Resources committee  I wouldn't go that far, but there was a process that was launched with a goal to try to establish the parameters that would be recommended for designing a program. When that process didn't work out, the minister turned to the department to design the program.

Human Resources committee  Not that specific group. No.

Human Resources committee  The $1.73 is the current rate. On the rate that was chosen, it's a principle-based approach, where we said that employers would pay the same rate as employees without having to pay the employer portion. That's why in Quebec the rate will be $1.36 for 2010, which is the same rate