Under EU law, social security benefits are benefits provided according to the social security legislation of the Member States in the branches of sickness, maternity and equivalent paternity benefits; old-age pensions, pre-retirement and invalidity benefits; survivors' benefits and death grants; unemployment benefits; family benefits; benefits in respect of accidents at work and occupational diseases.

That said, what was done with the Helping Families in Need Act was structure benefits so that in a case where a new mother has an illness that continues beyond the 15 weeks of her maternity benefits, she can now, with the new legislation, switch to sickness benefits once she would otherwise be in receipt of parental benefits, which results in the possibility that she may collect up to a maximum of 65 weeks of special benefits. That amounts to 15 weeks of her maternity benefits, plus 15 weeks of sickness benefits, plus the maximum of 35 weeks of parental benefits.

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.

That said, the Helping Families in Need Act was structured so that, should a new mother's illness continue beyond the 15 weeks of her maternity benefits, she can now switch to sickness benefits when she starts parental benefits, which gives her the possibility of collecting up to 65 weeks in total of special benefits—15 weeks of maternity, 15 weeks of sickness, and 35 weeks of parental benefits—if that's the amount of time she wishes to take.

Under this bill, our government is proposing to do the right thing by giving the self-employed the ability to voluntarily opt into the EI program to be able to receive EI special benefits, which include maternity, parental, sickness and compassionate care benefits.

Special benefits particularly relevant to a family business include the following: 15 weeks of maternity benefits in the period surrounding the birth of a child; 10 weeks of parental benefits available to natural or adoptive parents, either mother or father, or shared between them as they deem appropriate; and a flexible combination of regular, sickness, maternity, and parental benefits.