Source: The Conversation – Canada
Pregnancy and infant loss affect thousands of Canadian families each year. Yet after a loss, many find themselves navigating not only grief but a complicated system of employment leaves and income benefits.
The protections and supports available are far from consistent across Canada. They vary by region, the timing of the loss, parental role and employment circumstances. The impact of a loss can extend beyond grief itself, affecting health, well-being and people’s ability to work. These impacts carry financial consequences for individuals, families and employers alike.
Policy reform is now getting more attention, but we know surprisingly little about how much grief actually affects people’s working lives. And without that evidence, it’s hard to tell whether new policies will help the people who need them.
A patchwork of protections
Provincial and territorial employment standards largely govern job-protected leave, while income support through employment insurance (EI) falls under the federal system. Québec is the exception on the benefits side.
For example, British Columbia offers up to six weeks of job-protected leave following a pregnancy loss. Québec ties entitlement more closely to timing: up to three weeks for a loss before 20 weeks of gestation, rising to about 18 weeks (the province’s full maternity leave) for a loss at or after 20 weeks.
Regional differences appear again in provisions following an infant loss. B.C. and Ontario offer up to 104 weeks of leave after the death of a child, no matter the cause. In Alberta, the default is much less, with leave of up to 104 weeks available only if the death results from a crime.
Eligibility for employment insurance benefits also depends on parental role: the person who was pregnant, their partner and adoptive or surrogate parents are not always equally entitled.
Following the death of an infant, maternity benefits generally continue, but parental and paternity benefits end within one to two weeks of the death. Families lose that support at the moment they need it most.
This compounding of grief and financial strain — and their toll on health and well-being — is a burden increasingly recognized in calls for legislative reform, in Canada and abroad.
Reform, but for whom?
This patchwork of entitlements, benefits and eligibility rules can fail to match what families need. It creates uncertainty and financial instability at a time when people are least able to handle administrative complexity. It has also prompted growing policy attention.
One example is Evan’s Law (the Relieving Grieving Parents of an Administrative Burden Act), or Bill C-222, a private member’s bill currently before Parliament. It would allow parents to continue receiving EI parental benefits after the death of a newborn rather than losing eligibility as soon as the infant dies.
Such legislative efforts reflect a broader shift: recognition within policy that pregnancy and infant loss constitute a form of grief warranting societal and workplace attention. They also acknowledge that current systems may not adequately account for the experiences of grieving Canadians.
But they also raise another question: How do we know whether these reforms go far enough, and for whom? That question is surprisingly difficult to answer.
Measuring the impacts of grief at work
Research has established that grief affects people’s working lives, but there is little on how to measure that impact. This limits how well programs and reforms can be evaluated.
Grief can shape not only whether someone returns to work, but also their career trajectory, earning potential and employability. Yet the methods used to measure these impacts are fragmented and inconsistent from one study to the next. Most existing research relies on one-time snapshots. Few studies follow people over time, even though grief may unfold unevenly and its effects can ebb, resurface or persist.
This matters because policymakers need evidence about the scale and duration of consequences of grief following pregnancy and infant loss. Without it, basic design questions go unanswered.
How long might someone need to be away from work? Who should be eligible for these protections and benefits? Does the impact differ according to the type or timing of loss? Should protections be extended to losses before pregnancy, such as embryo loss? What happens when someone returns to work but is not yet functioning as they did before? What is the role of employers and workplaces in supporting employees once they return?
Closing this evidence gap is therefore part of closing the policy gap. More consistent measurement would help researchers compare experiences across populations and jurisdictions, and give policymakers what they need to design evidence-informed reforms.
It could also make visible costs that currently go uncounted: lost income, disrupted careers and the strains of returning to work while grieving.
Read more:
The painful collision between work life and pregnancy loss
More than a policy question
Pregnancy and infant loss cannot be reduced to an employment policy issue. But employment and income-support systems are one of the places where society communicates which losses it recognizes, and what support it considers warranted.
Meaningful change in policy and workplace practice can give people room to grieve, to recover and, in time, to return to contributing their talents fully.
As Canada weighs reforms after pregnancy and infant loss, building evidence-informed policy will depend on better ways to measure the wide-ranging effects of grief at work so that policy is grounded in what families across the country actually experience.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/10/15/theres-no-clock-on-the-grief-of-losing-an-infant-but-there-is-a-deadline-to-return-to-work/