Prime Minister Justin Trudeau applauds as Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland presents the federal government budget for fiscal year 2023-24 in the House of Commons in Ottawa, March 28.BLAIR GABLE/Reuters
Women who have had a miscarriage will be able to take paid leave from federally regulated jobs under plans set out in Tuesday’s budget. But the government was unclear whether women who suffer a miscarriage in the first few months of pregnancy would qualify, or if their partners could also take time off.
Ottawa also plans to make more people eligible for parental leave from work if they experience the loss of a child. People whose child has gone missing could also qualify.
“If you’ve suffered a miscarriage or lost a child, you shouldn’t be expected to just get up and go back to work,” Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan told The Globe and Mail. “You should be able to take paid leave while you heal. That’s the least anyone deserves.”
But a Tory MP who lost a newborn daughter and tabled a bill to bring in leave for parents who have suffered a stillbirth said the government proposals raised questions.
Calgary Conservative Tom Kmiec, whose daughter Lucy-Rose died at 39 days old in 2018, introduced a private member’s bill in 2021 to change the law to give parents who have a stillborn baby or lose a child more time off work to grieve.
“Though the budget has elements of my Private Members Bill from 2021 that creates new leave for parents experiencing pregnancy loss, it is still unclear on how these will work or what is being implemented,” he said.
The government did not say whether women who have a miscarriage in the first few weeks of pregnancy would qualify, saying that “eligibility and other elements of new bereavement leave provisions are still subject to cabinet approval.”
It said in a statement: “We look forward to bringing forth these new supports for families in the weeks ahead.”
Workers in industries regulated by the federal government, including banks, airports and airlines, grain elevators, radio and TV broadcasting and telecoms, would qualify for the paid time off work, as would members of the federal public service.
Melissa Sulley, who counsels people who have suffered miscarriages and stillbirth, said offering paid time off was a “wonderful acknowledgment of the pain people go through and validates their experience.”
Ms. Sulley, a mother of three who had seven miscarriages, ranging from five to 20 weeks into her pregnancies, said people can suffer trauma after a loss of a pregnancy and find it hard to go straight back to work and continue as normal.
She said this could include people who have a miscarriage in the first trimester, believed to affect around a quarter of pregnancies.
“For a lot of people there is the grief,” she said.
Currently, women who have a miscarriage can be eligible for sickness benefits or for maternity benefits. Ms. Sulley said to access these benefits they had to jump through a number of “hoops.”
The government has already introduced measures to allow bereavement leave for parents who experience a stillbirth. But employees who have a miscarriage do not get the same benefit.
During the debate on Mr. Kmiec’s bill, Liberal MP Brenda Shanahan shared that 30 years ago she had given birth to a stillborn daughter. She disclosed that at work, “people had a hard time understanding” what she was going through.
Immigration Minister Sean Fraser has also spoken about how he lost his newborn daughter, Ruth, in December, 2019.
Mr. O’Regan supported Mr. Kmiec’s bill and spoke to opposition parties to get cross-party support for the measures. It passed in December, 2021, and extended bereavement leave to eight weeks for people who have a stillborn child or whose child dies.
His 2021 mandate letter from the Prime Minister, setting out the priorities for his job, included a commitment to “amend the Canada Labour Code to provide up to five new paid leave days for federally regulated employees who experience a miscarriage or stillbirth.”