Electronic Signature Legitimateness for Pregnancy Leave Policy in Australia

How to eSign a document: electronic signature legitimateness for Pregnancy Leave Policy in Australia

hi everyone it's dr steph so this month i was part of a financial literacy talk for women and while the finances of maternity leave was a very small portion of that talk the majority of the questions were about matleaf and it makes sense that this is the most asked question from women because it is very confusing so to simplify things for my fellow women i'm recording just the maternity leave portion of that talk for your reference because when you take matt leave you can have this knowledge early so that you can plan ahead and not have delays in receiving your benefits so if you find it helpful remember to like and subscribe to be notified of financial events for women that i'm a part of like this one in the future so in this video i'm going to go over the basics of matt leave versus parental leave how e.i and employer top-up works and since most of my audience are doctors and residents who often delay family planning due to long years of school topics specific to them include when is the best time to take maternity leave and the pregnancy benefit program for ontario physicians all right so while i've been using the term mat leave i wanted to clarify the basic terminology a bit so we're all on the same page matt leave also known as pregnancy leave can only be taken by the birth mother and based on the employment standards act you are entitled to 17 weeks of unpaid time off work it can begin on or the begin before the due date or on the date that the baby is born now mat leave is different from parental leave which refers to the leave you take after you give birth so this can be taken by the dad so parental leave can include paternity leave now parental leave has two options standard and extended if you in the standard leave if you are the birth parent you can get 35 weeks if both parents take leave then you can receive five additional weeks for a total of 40 weeks with any one parent not taking more than 35 weeks in the extended option it's about 61 weeks leave if both parents take leave then you can get eight extra weeks on top of the 61 with one parent not taking more than 61 weeks if you pick one option you can't switch to the other option now if you have a miscarriage in the 17 weeks before the expected date of delivery you can either get 12 weeks starting from the day of miscarriage or 17 weeks from the dates you started leave whichever is longer so now let's talk a little bit about ei or employment insurance you may have seen it taken off your paycheck and it's a small percentage of your income that you pay into so that if you were unemployed for whatever reason you can access benefits now you qualify for ei if you have worked at least 600 hours in a salary job over the past 52 weeks during maternity leave you can get ei for up to 15 weeks for 55 percent of your weekly earnings and you can start claiming the payable benefits as early as 12 weeks before your due date there is also a waiting period of about one week before the benefits are paid out during parental leave it's if you take standard leave it's the same rate and you have to claim it within 12 months after the the week the child was born or adopted but if you decide to take extended leave it's the same overall pay as standard but just stretched out over a longer time and must be claimed within 18 months some employers will give you something called a top up like in the case of our hospital residents they can get topped up to 84 percent of their regular weekly earnings but this percentage changes based on your company remember all maternity and parental leave benefits do count as taxable income so you'll be getting a t4e statement of employment insurance and other benefits tax slip for your tax filing to apply for ei the government of canada website has a step-by-step list on what to do and calling service canada to speak with a person is helpful as well so a popular question in the medical or in any professional community is when is the best time to take mat leave the general answer is that fertility isn't something that has a perfect timing and especially in fields like medicine where you're in school for like 10 years and have debt waiting until you have your house and finances in order may not coincide with the time that you're most fertile which is usually in your 20s not to mention by the time you're out of student debt and ready to have kids you might be faced with infertility even though there are huge advances in fertility treatments many of these options are quite expensive costing in the thousands to tens of thousands but if we were to talk about timing uh matt leave purely from a financial perspective comparing between having a child in med school versus residency versus staff well so if you were to take matt leave in med school to put it bluntly there's not a lot of pregnancy leave support and may be an area for future student advocacy it kind of varies depending on the leave of absence policy at your school now residency is generally probably the best time purely from a financial perspective due to this top up and it can vary based on which year you're in so you might get a higher top-up if you're in like pgy9 for example as a staff physician there is a benefit program which i'm going to touch on in the next slide but it does not pay as much as what you get in residency the caveat is that some family physicians in capitation models might have higher pay than that program through their capitation but you know you can't just like leave your patients when you take mad leave so there is the frustrating task of finding a locum to cover your practice so staff physicians in ontario and feel free to share in the comments what they do in your province if it's not ontario the program is called the pplbp or the pregnancy and parental leave benefit policy this comes out to be approximately 1300 per week over 17 weeks as of april 2022 so with the pplbp you can begin your leave as early as five weeks before the expected date of delivery and if you need to begin your leave earlier due to a health issue just make sure you show a letter from the ob or midwife now i use dotted lines to show that you don't have to take leave consecutively unlike the ei program you just have to take it in seven week seven day increments from saturday sunday to saturday the 17 weeks has to be completed within 12 months of the child joining the parent this is important to know because there can be blocks of time where we can't line up locum coverage and then the only option is to come out of parental leave and then cover your own clinic so the non-consecutive leave allows for the flexibility for doctors to jump in and out of work so i mentioned the 1300 per week in the last slide and this is calculated as 75 of your past 12 months of eligible income and i use this term a lot so what does this term mean it's stuff like your billings or any income made through ohip or clinical services private work or teaching stipends are considered ineligible and there's another whole list of that other ineligible income and those don't count towards the 75 percent of the billings so most doctors will make more than 1300 per week at 75 percent of their weekly income but for those that don't remember that for those that don't then they might get less than the 1300 so remember if you are currently on leave and you're making more than 2600 per week so the 1300 plus let's say more than 1300 in capitation or any other forms of eligible income then the 1300 from the pplbp will get reduced dollar for dollar if you are incorporated the pplbp will get paid personally and not to the corp however incorporation can provide a benefit in pregnancy or parental leave to help smooth out the fluctuations of income so for more info on that check out this video which i'll link above and in the description below on should i incorporate to determine whether this is the right decision for you as an additional income smoothing during your pregnancy leave and then to apply for the pplbp program be sure to check out this website which i've linked and download the pdf application and if you're a resident in ontario check out the apparel resources it's a long read but i hope this video kind of summarizes it for you finally if you have any questions resources that you found helpful or pregnancy advice to share with other women please leave a comment and thank you for watching