Ottawa, ON – Garnett Genuis, Conservative Shadow Minister for Employment, released the following statement on the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report on the cost of continuing EI maternity and parental benefits when a parent receiving them passes away:
“Today we are calling on the government to continue parental benefits for families who lose a parent on leave in the upcoming Budget.
“When a parent on leave dies, their family should not also lose the benefits that parent paid into. Under current rules, those benefits stop right away. A family that is already grieving is left with a sudden loss of income at the worst possible time.
“Conservatives pushed the government to allow for a continuation of parental benefits for families who lose a child, while also proposing extending that same support to families who lose a parent. This work began with Motion 110, proposed by Blake Richards in the 42nd Parliament. Thanks to the initiative of Jamil Jivani following a conversation with one of his constituents, we adopted a motion at the Human Resources Committee to get detailed costing from the PBO for the continuation of benefits when a parent dies.
“That PBO report is now in, and it confirms that this change is extremely low cost. The PBO estimates that, on average, fewer than 100 families a year would be affected and that this measure would only cost about $4.4 million over five years—less than $1 million per year on average. For context, that is the equivalent of what Mark Carney spent on catering during international travel in a single year.
“This is a basic fairness measure. The cost is small because the number of families is small, but the difference it makes to each of them is very significant. These families paid into the system and are not asking for anything new. They are asking that benefits they already earned continue during the hardest time of their lives.
“Conservatives are calling on the government to include this simple change in the November 5 budget.”