I Paid Into EI for 16 Years. When I Had a Baby, Canada Kept Every Cent.
From age 15 to 31, I paid thousands into Employment Insurance in Canada. When I had my son and needed support, I got nothing — because I'd had the audacity to start my own business. The government kept all of it.
I started working at fifteen years old. And from that first job until I was thirty-one, I paid into Employment Insurance every single paycheque — the way every Canadian worker does. Thousands of dollars. Year after year. I didn't question it. That's what you do. You contribute, and the system is there when you need it.
Then I started my own business. And everything I had contributed for sixteen years became irrelevant.
When my son Toby was born on July 16, 2025 — three weeks early, emergency C-section, bag not packed — I discovered what self-employed mothers in Canada actually get: nothing. Not a portion. Not a reduced amount. Nothing. Because EI for self-employed people only looks at the last 12 months of registered contributions. Sixteen years of premiums I'd paid as an employee? The government kept all of it.
The Math They Don't Tell You
Self-employed mothers get zero automatic parental leave — even after decades of EI contributions as employees
To access special EI benefits as a self-employed person, you must opt in at least 12 months before your claim — regardless of how many years you paid into the system as an employee. All prior contributions are forfeited the moment you leave traditional employment. Meanwhile, employees receive up to 18 months of parental leave. Estonia: 86 weeks fully paid. Sweden: 480 days.
I also pay over 30% in taxes as a self-employed person. So I'm paying more into the system than I ever did as an employee — and I'm entitled to less. The government takes and takes and takes. Middle-class self-employed mothers in Canada are funding a safety net they are explicitly excluded from.
And if I'm barely getting by — with a business, a husband, and every advantage a self-employed mother can have — what does that system say to the women who have none of those things? To the single mother who went freelance because no employer would accommodate her schedule? To the woman who started a small business because she couldn't afford the childcare required to work for someone else?
You Cannot Plan Your Way Out of a Broken System
The standard advice is to 'opt in a year in advance.' My son arrived three weeks early. My Crohn's disease meant my doctors weren't sure I could carry a pregnancy at all. You cannot plan a year in advance for a body that doesn't follow the plan. And you cannot opt into a program retroactively — no matter how many years you spent contributing to it before you had any idea you'd need it.
“I spent 16 years paying into a system that told me, when I needed it most: you don't qualify. Because you had the audacity to build something of your own.”
Becky Tsadilas, Founder, Momera
I work on poverty policy. I know how these systems are designed. And I still got caught by this one — because it is designed to catch you. It is designed to make self-employment look like a choice that comes with financial penalties, not freedoms. It is designed to keep women tethered to traditional employment even when that employment doesn't accommodate their lives.
This Needs to Change
A parental leave system that erases sixteen years of contributions the moment you start a business is not a fair system. It is a punitive one. Canada needs to count lifetime EI contributions — not just the last 12 months — when calculating parental leave eligibility for self-employed workers. And it needs to do it now, because the workforce is changing. The self-employed are not the exception anymore. We are a growing share of the people funding this country.
We deserve the same protection as everyone else. We already paid for it.
Becky Tsadilas
Founder, Momera — Movement of Mothers Ending Poverty. Based in Cochrane, Alberta. hello@momera.ca