In the last three weeks, Lindsay Northrup has received half of her parental leave benefits, which are now about half of what she earns when she works.
“Some of my bills have not been paid – they will be late,” Northrup said. “It’s disappointing and I’m not guilty.”
Northrup lives in Bloomfield, NB, with her husband and eight-month-old son. She went on maternity leave from her job as a dental hygienist at the end of last summer.
In March, she received a letter informing her that she had an outstanding debt of $ 2,000 from Canadian Emergency Response Assistance (CERB).
Northrup said she did not expect to pay the compensation – shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March 2020, she was fired due to a shortage of jobs and qualifies for compensation. She stopped receiving payments after returning to work in June 2020.
In November 2021, Federal Employment Minister Carla Qualtrow published a statement stating Anyone claiming benefits before June 14, 2020 through Service Canada will receive an “advance” payment of $ 2,000.
Those who were not entitled or collected the CERB in less than 20 weeks will have outstanding debt, according to the statement.
After receiving the debt notice in the mail, Northrup called the number in the letter to make a payment agreement.
“I definitely didn’t agree with that.”
Northrup asked if he could pay off the debt when he returned to work in September. When the civil servant said he could not do so, Northrup agreed to a monthly payment of $ 32.
When she entered her online banking app the following month, she saw that her parent’s EI payment was just over $ 500.
She called the same number she had before, and after a long wait, an employee called.
“He told me that the agreement must have been to withdraw 50 percent of my salary … plus $ 32 a month,” Northrup said. – I definitely did not agree with that.
The whole experience was “incredibly disappointing,” Northrup said, adding that she was betrayed by phone.
“I wrote everything down on a note, just so I could have a good sequence in my head of what happened,” she said. “But it was a little confusing.”
Debt recovery
In an e-mail statement, Employment and Social Development Canada said what happened to Northrup was normal practice for EI’s debt recovery, including CERB.
“As part of the Canadian government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ESDC has paused to rebuild EI’s debt, starting in March 2020, to ease any financial strain on Canadian families,” the statement said.
The break ended on March 21.
Northrup knows she’s not alone. Her friend Marisa Keleher also cut her parental benefits last month.
“It’s happening to me and at least one of my friends I know,” Northrup said. How many other people have this happen to them?
Canada for Employment and Social Development said the number of people whose maternity or parental benefits have been reduced due to CERB debt is not readily available.
Parental benefits as a care policy
The letters Nortrup and Kelleher received about a month before their first deductions included a notice that their debt to EI could be repaid through their benefits.
An excerpt from Keleher’s notice of CERB’s debt letter is shown. She said she looked at it quickly when she received it, but she didn’t think much about it then. (Submitted by Marisa Keleher)
But Andrea Dusset, a researcher on women and gender at Brock University, said she could see how a new parent would assume that a refund would not apply to them – parental benefits are not often considered employment benefits.
“This is a big mistake in communication,” said Dusset, who is also a research chair in Canada in the field of work and gender care. “People call them maternity and parental benefits.
She added that while the federal policy on parental leave had made progress on gender equality, it lagged behind the Nordic countries in treating the plaintiffs as caring workers and not as unemployed.
“[If] it’s a care policy, then maybe we should pay more attention to it and admit that it’s not the same as [employment] insurance. “
Dusset said more flexibility should be allowed for new parents in paying off debts.
“Maybe when people come back to work, they could get some of it back,” Dusse said. “But this should not affect families as long as they are in a situation of already living on reduced incomes and … caring for a baby.”
Financial difficulties
Keleher said he had to fax about a dozen documents and ask several questions from government officials to prove he was in “financial difficulty” to qualify for a payment plan.
When Keleher checked her bank account earlier this month and noticed that the last installment of her parental benefits had been halved, she was shocked.
Keleher lives in St. John, with her husband and seven-month-old son, and has taken maternity leave from a cafe management since the fall. The family recently bought a house, and Keleher said their bills have risen.
She also received a notice informing her of her debt to CERB. She said she was eligible for compensation, but expected to have to pay back the first $ 2,000.
However, she did not know that she would be reimbursed through her two-week payments.
“I just couldn’t believe they were going to do that,” Keleher said. “We just thought it was kind of aggressive, especially when I’m already making so little money compared to what I usually do.”
Keleher has since negotiated a $ 60 seizure, but has not yet received a payment that reflects that amount.
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