Feds consider new leave options

Workers could get time off to care for dying loved ones

The federal government is considering legislation, similar to parental leave rules, that would allow people to take extended time off work to care for sick or dying loved ones.

The government caught many off guard when it announced its intention in this month’s speech from the throne.

“The government will also modify existing programs to ensure that Canadians can provide compassionate care for a gravely ill or dying child, parent or spouse without putting their jobs or income at risk,” said Governor General Adrienne Clarkson in presenting the government’s agenda, Oct. 1.

Though the speech from the throne is usually only an indication of what the government is considering, Senator Sharon Carstairs said she is “extraordinarily optimistic” about the chances of the idea becoming a reality. Carstairs is the leader of the Government in the Senate and therefore a member of the Cabinet.

It won’t happen right away but the government’s willingness to expand existing models indicates it is willing to go ahead with it, she said. “This is not going to happen tomorrow but we are at last now launched into a policy initiative,” she said.

Human Resources Development Canada will explore options for a palliative care leave program but was saying little about what the program might look like or even what options it is exploring.

But Carstairs said the preferable route would be to use the Employment Insurance rather than the tax system to ensure income security. The federal government can only guarantee income and not job security since leave provisions are determined by the provinces. “We need to go to the provinces and get their buy-in,” she said. “My own sense of it is that it’s going to be a relatively easy buy-in.”

Proponents of the idea say many Canadians already struggle to balance work and home lives and when care-giving responsibilities for a sick or dying loved one are added the stresses can become unbearable.

“We can’t just say it is not an employer concern anymore,” said Reynia Carr, an expert in elder-care issues for employee assistance provider Warren Shepell.

There are more and more people providing informal care for a loved one and most of those people are also employed and it is very stressful for people to work when they are faced with the reality that a loved one is dying, she said.

“One of the things that often causes stress for employees who are also caregivers is that the schedule doesn’t operate on the same clock as the employers,” she said. “There are conflicting demands; they have to attend a family meeting or a medical appointment. The other thing that happens is that they are thrown into a maze of terms and words that they have never heard before.”

Robert Glossop, executive director of programs at the Ottawa-based Vanier Institute of the Family, an organization that monitors family trends including work-life balance, said he was pleased to see the issue raised by the government.

“This seems to me to be an acknowledgement of a major preoccupation for many families,” he said, adding that the number of people having to care for a dying loved one will only increase. Acknowledging it as a concern gives the problem legitimacy, he added.

Giving people the option of taking time off work to help care for a dying loved one is a good idea but there can be little doubt it will complicate things for HR departments, said Sheryl Smolkin, director of Watson Wyatt Worldwide’s Canadian Research and Information Centre. One of the side effects of extended maternity and parental leave benefits (recently expanded to a full year) is that it is more difficult to have a full complement of skilled people on the job, she said.

Jason Clemens, director of fiscal studies for the Fraser Institute, said government should not be extending EI benefits but cutting employer premiums instead. He is also skeptical there is much demand for such a program in the first place. “There is not much academic work that this is actually a problem,” he said. Government should not be forcing it upon employers. And if it is a problem, it should be up to employers to support employees. Those organizations that don’t will suffer because they won’t be able to hold onto them, he said.

But Carstairs said that while some organizations can take steps on their own to help employees, specifically citing pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline, it would be very difficult for small- and medium-sized employers to afford to give employees paid time off work. That is why the government has to get involved, she said.

Earlier this year GlaxoSmithKline announced it would give employees 13 weeks off with full pay to care for a critically or terminally ill family member.

“We have to support our employees, so we created a compassionate leave (which) extends to employees a period of 13 weeks of paid leave,” explained Leanne Kitchen, vice-president of the GlaxoSmithKline Foundation, which was formed in 1996 and is dedicated to promoting community wellness for Canadians. The foundation partnered with the Canadian Hospice and Palliative Care Association to create a Web site (www.living-lessons.org) that provides information about caring for people in the last stages of life.

“From our employees’ standpoint many of them will be in a position where they will be caregivers for family or children,” said Kitchen.

She said there has been too little dialogue about the issue of palliative care and she was pleased to see the government is considering helping more people take time off work to provide it.

“This has been an issue nobody wants to talk about,” she said. Most employees are ill-prepared to deal with these situations and without having to worry about financial burdens or losing a job.

There was very little resistance to the program within GlaxoSmithKline, said Kitchen.

The company benefits from the time and efforts of the employee, she said. “These people all have personal lives and it affects us all if they have an issue to deal with. If we can help them it is a win for us and the employee.”

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