The Federal Court of Appeal has ruled that parts of Canada's Employment Insurance Act discriminate against women who lose their jobs around maternity and parental leave. Here's what happened—and why it matters.
If you have ever thought, "How is it possible that I can lose my job after having a baby and then not qualify for EI?" you're not alone.
For years, women have told us stories about being laid off during maternity leave, having their contracts end while they're away, or returning to work only to discover that their role has disappeared.
Now, a new court decision has put another piece of this problem under the spotlight.
On September 3, 2026, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled in favour of six Quebec mothers who had been denied regular EI benefits after losing their jobs during or shortly after maternity and parental leave.
The court found that certain provisions of the Employment Insurance Act are discriminatory and violate the equality rights guaranteed under Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Here's what you need to know.
What was this case about?
The case involved six women who had given birth, received maternity and parental benefits, and subsequently lost their jobs before, during, or shortly after their leaves.
They were denied regular EI benefits that they otherwise would have received if they hadn't recently been receiving maternity and parental benefits.
The reasons varied. Some had not accumulated enough insurable hours during the relevant period to qualify for regular EI. Others had reached the maximum number of weeks of total EI benefits.
The women challenged the rules, arguing that they disproportionately disadvantaged women.
The Federal Court of Appeal agreed.
Why did the court say the EI rules were discriminatory?
This is one of the most important parts of the decision.
The rules themselves don't explicitly say that women should receive less protection than men. They apply to both men and women.
But the court looked at the real-world impact of the legislation.
Only women can become pregnant and give birth, and therefore only women can receive maternity benefits. Women also make up the majority of people who receive parental benefits, and the majority of people who combine maternity and parental benefits.
That means rules restricting how maternity and parental benefits interact with regular EI benefits have a disproportionate impact on women.
In other words, a rule doesn't have to explicitly say "women" to create a gendered disadvantage.
The court found that these provisions reinforced the long-standing economic disadvantages associated with pregnancy and motherhood by providing inadequate unemployment protection to women who lose their jobs around the time of their leave.
Wait—can you lose your job while you're on maternity or parental leave?
This is where things get complicated.
There is a common misconception that being pregnant or taking maternity or parental leave means you can never be terminated.
That's not quite how the law works.
Pregnancy-related discrimination is prohibited under Canadian human rights legislation. An employer cannot terminate someone because they are pregnant or because they took a protected leave.
But an employee can potentially be terminated for reasons unrelated to their pregnancy or leave, including in the context of a legitimate restructuring or other business decision, subject to the applicable employment and human rights laws.
The challenge is determining whether the stated reason is actually the reason.
An employer isn't likely to say, "We're letting you go because you went on maternity leave."
Instead, a termination might be described as a restructuring, redundancy, elimination of a position, or another business decision.
That can make these cases extremely difficult for employees to navigate.
Why is this issue so important to Moms at Work?
Because this isn't just a legal issue. It's a pattern we've been hearing about for years.
In 2024, Moms at Work conducted a survey of 1,300 Canadian women who had taken maternity leave from their workplace.
The results confirmed what women in our community had been telling us anecdotally:
- 15% said they had been dismissed, laid off, or had their contracts not renewed during pregnancy, while on maternity leave, or shortly after returning to work.
- More than 27% were denied flexible arrangements after returning from leave.
- 16% were denied flexible work during pregnancy.
- 11% were discouraged from attending prenatal appointments.
- 7% were denied sick leave after returning to work.
Fifteen percent was the number that stopped us in our tracks.
These weren't isolated stories. They were thousands of women telling us, in different ways, that becoming a mother can fundamentally change how you're treated at work.
As Allison Venditti told The Walrus when discussing the research:
"I just got sick of people telling me that it wasn't a problem."
So we went looking for the numbers.
And the numbers told us there was a problem.
What does this have to do with the "motherhood penalty"?
A lot.
The motherhood penalty refers to the economic disadvantages women can experience after having children—including lower earnings, slower career progression, fewer opportunities for advancement, and greater employment insecurity.
The penalty isn't necessarily one single event.
Sometimes it's being passed over for a promotion.
Sometimes it's being told that your career goals aren't realistic now that you have children.
Sometimes it's being denied flexibility.
And sometimes it's much more direct: you lose your job.
Then, as this EI case demonstrates, you can find yourself navigating a social safety net that may also provide less protection because you were recently on maternity or parental leave.
That's a pretty significant problem.
So what happens when a woman loses her job around maternity or parental leave?
This is the heart of the case.
Imagine someone takes a year of maternity and parental leave. During or shortly after that leave, she loses her job.
Under the EI rules challenged in this case, the benefits she had already received while on leave could affect her ability to access regular EI benefits following the job loss.
That means the same period of time in which she was caring for a new baby could also leave her with fewer options if her employment disappeared.
The Federal Court of Appeal found that this system disproportionately disadvantages women.
And that's important because losing your job while caring for an infant isn't simply an employment problem. It's a family income problem.
Has the law changed already?
No—not yet.
The Federal Court of Appeal declared the discriminatory provisions to be "of no force or effect."
However, the court suspended that declaration for one year.
That gives the federal government 12 months to rewrite the legislation.
So while this is a significant legal victory, the EI system doesn't suddenly look different today.
Could the government appeal?
Yes.
The federal government has 60 days to indicate whether it intends to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada.
The government has said it will carefully review the decision before determining its next steps.
So there is still uncertainty about where this case ultimately ends up.
Could this affect other women?
Potentially, yes.
The six women who brought this case were fighting for themselves, but the implications extend far beyond them.
There are other women across Canada who have lost employment around maternity or parental leave and subsequently found themselves without access to regular EI benefits.
The organization that supported the women throughout the case, Mouvement Action Chômage de Montréal, has said that hundreds—even thousands—of people could find themselves in similar situations.
The full impact will depend on what happens next with the legislation and whether the federal government appeals.
What does Moms at Work think needs to change?
We've been talking about this for a long time.
The problem is bigger than one EI rule.
EI was designed around an outdated understanding of work and family.
Today, women are working, leading organizations, supporting families, and increasingly serving as primary or sole breadwinners. At the same time, parents are taking significant periods of leave to care for their children.
Yet our systems still too often treat employment and caregiving as competing priorities.
That's backwards.
In The Walrus, Allison argued that instead of continuing to try to "jerry rig EI to work for families," we should rethink how parental benefits are structured altogether.
One possibility is to make parental benefits a standalone benefit connected to the child, rather than having them draw from the same pool as unemployment benefits.
The principle is simple:
Taking time to have and care for a child shouldn't leave you more vulnerable if your job disappears.
Is this just about EI?
No.
And that's perhaps the biggest takeaway from this case.
The EI system is only one part of a much larger problem.
Our research showed that women face employment consequences before, during, and after maternity leave. The court has now recognized that the social safety net can compound those disadvantages.
That's why we can't look at maternity leave, employment discrimination, EI, childcare, flexible work, pay equity, and career advancement as completely separate issues.
They're connected.
A woman who is laid off while on maternity leave isn't simply dealing with a lost job.
She may be:
- caring for an infant;
- recovering from pregnancy and childbirth;
- losing household income;
- trying to find a new job at a time when childcare may be difficult to secure;
- navigating an employment system that may question her commitment because she's a mother; and
- discovering that the social safety net she expected to rely on doesn't work the way she thought it would.
This is what systemic inequality looks like.
What happens next?
For now, we're watching three things:
- Will the federal government appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada?
- How will the government rewrite the EI provisions during the one-year suspension period?
- Will those changes actually address the underlying problem—or simply patch the existing system?
At Moms at Work, we'll be watching closely.
Because the women who told us, "This happened to me," deserve more than acknowledgement.
They deserve a system that actually works.
The bottom line
The Federal Court of Appeal has recognized that a rule can be written to apply equally to everyone and still produce discriminatory outcomes for women.
That's a significant decision.
But it's also a reminder that we have a lot more work to do.
Our research showed that 15% of Canadian mothers surveyed had lost their jobs or had their contracts end around pregnancy or maternity leave.
Now the courts have recognized another way in which the system can disadvantage those same women after they lose that employment.
At Moms at Work, we don't think the answer is to keep patching systems that were built for a different world.
We don't fix women. We fix work.
And that means building employment and social safety-net systems that recognize the reality of working families—not the family and workplace models of decades ago.
