The logic is that because sickness and maternity benefits both essentially provide income support related to physical or emotional recovery, there is not that same logic to allow women who are receiving maternity benefits to suspend and to go on sickness.

The proposed change would allow parents in receipt of PCIC or compassionate care benefits to interrupt their claim and draw up to 15 additional weeks of sickness benefits under the EI program. Based on our estimates, this change might benefit approximately 300 claimants per year.

Since 2006, our government has adopted a number of measures to improve employment insurance, including the following: an extra five weeks of regular benefits were added and more than 500,000 Canadians have used them; the 2010 budget has extended by one year the improved version of the work-sharing program, which currently protects the jobs of 150,000 Canadians; unprecedented investments in training were made in order to help unemployed Canadians return to work — whether or not they were eligible for employment insurance — for a total of $1.5 billion over two years to help 150,000 Canadians in 2009-10; an additional 5 to 20 weeks of em ...[+++]ployment insurance benefits were made available to long-tenured workers who paid into EI for many years and have difficulty finding new jobs; a total of 2.6 million self-employed workers gained voluntary access to special benefits, which has been a long-standing demand; the 2010 budget has made it easier for relatives of crime victims to access sickness benefits; for the first time ever, 2.6 million self-employed workers in Canada have access to sickness and compassionate care benefits under the employment insurance program; and in 2006, our government expanded the number of family members and others who can receive compassionate care benefits.

If the legislation of a Member State subordinates recognition of entitlement to a benefit to the completion of a minimum period of insurance during a determined period preceding the contingency insured against (reference period) and lays down that periods during which benefits were paid under the legislation of that Member State or periods devoted to child-rearing in the territory of that Member State shall extend this reference period, the periods during which invalidity or old age pensions or sickness, unemployment, industrial accidents at work or occupational disease benefits were paid under the legislation of another Member State and periods devoted to c ...[+++]hild-rearing in the territory of another Member State shall also extend this reference period’.

It is necessary to establish specific provisions regulating the non-overlapping of sickness benefits in kind and sickness benefits in cash which are of the same nature as those which were the subject of the judgments of the Court of Justice in Case C-215/99 Jauch and C-160/96 Molenaar, provided that those benefits cover the same risk.

It is necessary to establish specific provisions regulating the non-overlapping of sickness benefits in kind and sickness benefits in cash which are of the same nature as those which were the subject of the judgments of the Court of Justice in Case C-215/99 Jauch and C-160/96 Molenaar, provided that those benefits cover the same risk.