EI/Maternity leave benefits question

[calgaryrocks]

Service Canada south office is now in North Calgary and I don't want to wait 5 hours on hold so I am reaching out to our great community.....

My wife is expecting a baby in May and we are trying to understand how maternity leave benefits work. on the service Canada site it states the following:
You have accumulated at least 600 hours of insurable employment during the qualifying period

Hours of insurable employment are the hours you work, for either one or more employers under written or verbal contracts of service, for which you receive wages.
The qualifying period is the shorter of:

• the 52-week period immediately before the start date of your EI period; or
• the period since the start of a previous EI benefit period, if that benefit period started during the last 52 weeks.

So, my question is related to the second bullet. My wife is a substitute teacher and started EI in July. She has continued to report every 2 weeks but we are thinking she should stop reporting if it is based on 600 hours since her last report.

if it is 600 hours from the start of her benefit period (shorter than 52 weeks) then is it counting from July when she first submitted a claim, or from her last reported 2 week period (ie December)?

I am hoping others have some experience with this or better yet work for service Canada and know the answer....the statement on the website wasn't clear enough for me I guess!

[albertGQ]

Don't know the answer but congrats on the new baby!

[BlackArcher101]

To me it sounds like she needs 600 hours of insurable employment since the start of her previous EI benefit period in July.

[Swayze11]

From my wife who is in HR and also on mat leave:

“You need 600 insurance hours within the year that you are claiming. So from May 2017 to May 2018 she needs 600 insurance hours. Since she has been claiming EI since July they are counting it from the July period since that is when she started her last EI claim. So basically she has from now until May to get that 600 hours for maternity EI”

Is she still getting EI right now? Because if she isn’t versus if she is will make a difference

[bizaro86]

You may want to look into reopening the previous claim. I took some paternity leave when my second child was born, and was laid off shortly after I returned. I hadn't worked enough hours in between to qualify again, but they reopened my original pat leave claim so I got the max minus the 4 weeks I had already received.

The letter I got from Service Canada said they automatically calculated which was better.

[calgaryrocks]

Originally Posted by Swayze11

From my wife who is in HR and also on mat leave:

“You need 600 insurance hours within the year that you are claiming. So from May 2017 to May 2018 she needs 600 insurance hours. Since she has been claiming EI since July they are counting it from the July period since that is when she started her last EI claim. So basically she has from now until May to get that 600 hours for maternity EI”

Is she still getting EI right now? Because if she isn’t versus if she is will make a difference

Yea she still reports biweekly but is getting some work

Sent from my ZTE A2017U using Tapatalk

[Northendzone]

My question to you is why are you looking into this. Your job was done a few months ago. Focus on your golf game and other leisurely pursuits.

Seriously though, you may want to suggest to the wife that she call her union office as they should also have a good sense of this, given teachers get pregnant.

[Ducay]

She needs 600 hours between July and May/when the baby arrives.