(Ottawa) Courtney Franks is taking the federal government to the Social Security Tribunal to settle a dispute over EI benefits.
According to her, it is not a question of money. She believes the system treats new mothers like her unfairly.
Mme Franks argues that the rules put in place during the pandemic allowed workers to qualify for EI, but they have prevented many mothers from getting fully paid parental leave.
She hopes the court will rule that the wording of the law is too vague and that it has not been properly applied. In her case, the one-year leave she thought she would take with her baby has been drastically reduced.
Going to the Social Security Tribunal is perhaps the ultimate solution for these mothers who want to obtain the benefits to which they would have been entitled had there not been a pandemic. It is unlikely that the government will resolve this situation through legislation.
The legal battle will be difficult for Mme Franks. The court has already ruled against him once. On two other occasions, he ruled in a similar fashion, saying that his hands were bound by the law.
“This is insane,” wrote Mme Franks in a document submitted to the court. I must not be penalized for being pregnant. ”
To be eligible for EI, an employee must work for at least 600 hours, but the government lowered that floor to 420 during the pandemic.
In addition, the government added a one-time credit for hours to each applicant to help qualify, even if they did not need it.
So of Demii Niles. She had worked enough to get benefits after being fired in March by Goodlife Fitness. She returned to work after the restrictions were lifted in Ontario and planned to stay at work until she gave birth in early October.
When a new mother is already receiving Employment Insurance benefits, she must reapply for parental leave. She must therefore comply with the required number of hours, even if she has not been able to hold a job because of the pandemic.
It was not until shortly before her delivery that Mme Niles learned that she didn’t have enough hours to qualify for full parental leave. It was explained to him that the hours already accumulated for the first benefit request could not be taken into account a second time.
“If it had allowed us to use the credit on time when we needed it, for example, for maternity leave, the government would have solved this problem”, underlines Mme Niles.
But for the Social Security Tribunal, the law is the law.
In August 2021, an arbitrator ruled that the court could not make an exception or overturn a law for the mother “even if [sa] situation is imperative ”.
A similar judgment was rendered in another case in October 2020.
In this case, a mother returned to work in March 2020 and did not work enough to qualify for the new parental leave program, even with the one-time credit.
The mother argued that she would have been eligible without COVID-19, the arbitrator ruled in favor of the government.
“Unfortunately, the law does not authorize the payment of maternity benefits unless a receiving party has fulfilled the conditions required to receive it,” the arbitrator wrote in his judgment. I really sympathize with the claimant’s situation, but I cannot circumvent, rewrite or ignore the law, even out of compassion. ”