November 7th 2018 - Bill C-243, An Act respecting the development of a national maternity assistance program strategy - Various Witnesses

Senator Poirier: Thank you both for being here. Melodie, thank you for sharing with us some of the challenges you have faced. I also want to congratulate you on the strength you have had through that battle. That is why you are here today. I want to congratulate you.

My first question is for the member. In section 4 of your bill, you touched on the report to Parliament within three years after the day on which the act comes into force. Initially, you had put in the bill for the minister to report to Parliament within two years.

Can you explain why you had chosen two years and subsequently the House of Commons amended to bill to three years?

Mr. Gerretsen: It was amended at the committee stage with the HUMA Committee, the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, which is the committee that handled the bill.

It was an amendment they made at that point. I don’t know if it would be fair for me to comment as to what their reasoning was. Perhaps they sought out other advice that put them to changing it to three years.

In this process, there were a number of things that would change from time to time. This bill did a bit of a morph in terms of its original form to where it is today. That has been a result of a lot of moving parts that have been changing.

Senator Poirier: I also understand why you put forward this type of bill given the position you are in. You could not put in a private member’s bill such as, as my colleague was saying, in the Senate, a money-type of bill. This is, at least, a beginning step to the process of where we need to do something.

I’m aware the Province of Quebec has the Safe Maternity Experience program in place. You also mentioned there were other countries that have a long-term national strategy and how they work.

Can you share with us a bit of how those programs worked? Is there anything in what is happening in other countries and also in Quebec that can be used or shared? Is it a step forward to take some of the work that has already been done out there and move faster on this, if possible?

Mr. Gerretsen: There are a number of things being done differently. In Quebec, there’s the preventative withdrawal, where the employer may opt out to eliminate the hazard of an employee’s work or assign other tasks. In that case in Quebec, the employer, if they can’t fulfill the assignment of the work, they can opt out.

In Finland, there was another example. There is a class of special maternity benefits provided to women when conditions may cause a particular risk to a woman’s pregnancy and the hazard cannot be eliminated by the employer.

In Australia, if there is no appropriate safe job available, employees are entitled to take paid “no safe job” leave for the risk period. Similar programs exist in France, Hungary, Denmark and elsewhere.

What I sought not to do in this bill was to try to draw the conclusions as to what the appropriate measures would be. I didn’t want to go that far. I wanted the bill to be about doing that work.

As with any research, if you start to propose things, you will be debated with a lot of different reasons why it might not work here or there. The strategy part of this has always been about reaching out to Quebec and to the other countries, finding the best practices and then making a recommendation as to what that strategy would look like in Canada.

Senator Poirier: Each province is different. Each province has their own program. Have you had any discussions with the provinces across Canada to see if there is any way of working in collaboration with them to help people in a situation like this to make ends meet?

Mr. Gerretsen: No, but we did research what different provinces were doing. I recognize this type of legislation primarily falls within the provinces’ jurisdiction, as it relates to employment. However, we can have the discussion and set a national standard that the provinces will pick up on. In Ontario, we have our own building code; however, 99 out of 100 times, it follows the exact form of the National Building Code.

Although we did not seek to have a discussion about how that could be done, we did start to seek out and realize the vast differences between provinces.

Senator Poirier: Thank you.

< Back to: Questions in Social Affairs, Science and Technology Committee