Provide more flexible parental leave.

What success looks like

Parents who want to spend more time at home with their children have the option of doing so with protected Employment Insurance parental benefits.

Government's narrative on progress

With Budget 2017, the Government of Canada created more flexible maternity and parental leave benefits. The changes allow parents to spread their parental benefit over a longer period of time (18 months), and give mothers the option to begin receiving Employment Insurance maternity benefits up to 12 weeks before their due date – up from eight weeks. The changes took effect December 3rd and give parents more support to spend time with their kids. Further, to support greater gender equality in the home and in the workplace, Budget 2018 proposed to introduce a new EI Parental Sharing Benefit to provide additional weeks of “use it or lose it” EI parental benefits, when both parents agree to share parental leave. The changes came into force on March 17, 2019.

Note: this is the government's own description, not an independent assessment.