Published documents suggest Stephen Harper's Conservatives have discovered the cost of delivering a new program that turns out to be less popular than expected.
Administering maternity and parental leave for self-employed workers through the employment insurance system cost taxpayers double the value of the benefits actually paid out, according to a briefing book prepared for Employment Minister Pierre Poilievre.
Extending EI's special benefits to self-employed workers was part of the 2008 Conservative election platform, which made a deliberate pitch to female voters and young families with offers like that.
The day he he announced it, Harper said his government had consulted with entrepreneurs and small business people and heard that it was "unfair" that they couldn't take maternity leave the way salaried employees could.
(In Quebec, benefits had been available for self-employed workers since 2006.)
The program was voluntary. It was intended to be mostly self-financing through the EI premiums paid by those who wanted to join. In other words: a cheap platform plank.
Today, EI's special benefits are available for not only maternity and parental leaves, but also leaves for sickness, compassionate care and care of critically ill children. (The vast majority of the claims are maternity and parental leaves for women.)
Self-employed parents could opt in starting in 2010, with the first benefits payable in 2011.
The government estimated between 300,000 and 500,000 would sign up. By 2014, officials were projecting 55,000 claims would be submitted annually.
In fact, just 14,394 self-employed workers opted in, making 2,316 claims between 2011 and the end of March 2014, according to the most recent report. Those claims were worth $21.1 million in benefits.
Poilievre's briefing reveals the cost of administering the program between 2009-10 and 2013-14 was expected to be $61 million for Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) and $26.2 million for the Canada Revenue Agency.
After so few people signed up, the actual spending on administrative costs by ESDC over that five-year period was lower than the original estimate. However, it still added up to $39.6 million, the briefing said.
That means so far, the bureaucracy working on the program in Poilievre's department has cost taxpayers nearly double the value of the $21 million in benefits paid out to the self-employed workers who signed up.
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