13 Weeks 6 Days

“Finally, we get some­thing out of that kid!” I joke while open­ing the brown envelop from the Canada Rev­enue Agency. I already know what’s inside: a cheque for $300—the exact amount for three instal­ments of the new Uni­ver­sal Child Care Ben­e­fit. Or, as well call it at home, dia­per and for­mula money.

This is the first time ever I get some kind of finan­cial help from the Cana­dian gov­ern­ment and it feels weird. I shrug the feel­ing off. It’s not my money, it’s Mark’s.

After Mark was born, I applied online for the 4-in-1 New­born Bun­dle, an effi­cient new­born reg­is­tra­tion ser­vice from the Gov­ern­ment of Ontario. I reg­is­tered Mark’s birth in just a few clicks (and amaz­ingly, I got it right, even though I was barely awake when I did it!) and applied for his birth cer­tifi­cate and social insur­ance number.

I was also given the option to apply for Canada Child Ben­e­fits, includ­ing the Uni­ver­sal Child Care Ben­e­fit, a monthly pay­ment of $100 per eli­gi­ble child under the age of 6 years. “Sure, why not?” I thought. “May as well!”

I hadn’t done much research on the finan­cial aspect of hav­ing a child in Canada. All I knew was that a as a newly estab­lished free­lancer, I wasn’t eli­gi­ble for the one-year mater­nity leave. It sucked but we fig­ured we would man­age, like we always do.

As a French, I was used to the government’s gen­eros­ity. Europe may be broke but most cit­i­zens enjoy var­i­ous great social perks: baby bonus, mater­nity ben­e­fit, fam­ily allowance, hous­ing ben­e­fit, schol­ar­ships, gov­ern­ment programs—a long list of ben­e­fits French value and fought for. This is not to say that French are lazy bums liv­ing off the state. It’s just that in Europe, the social wel­fare sys­tem plays a big role in people’s life and a gen­er­ous pro­tec­tion sys­tem is part of the landscape.

I have never expected the same kind of social safety net in Canada. In North Amer­ica, free mar­ket is king and even though Canada has much bet­ter social pro­tec­tions than Amer­ica, peo­ple are still left fend­ing for them­selves. I am thank­ful for Canada’s health­care sys­tem—I can’t imag­ine liv­ing in the U.S and hav­ing to fight for uni­ver­sal health­care. And we do have a social pro­tec­tion net, with pro­grams such as Ontario Works, the provin­cial social assis­tance pro­gram, or Employ­ment Insur­ance. When­ever I travel, I also buy a good travel insur­ance primer, just for peace of mind.

But I have never claimed social ben­e­fits since I came to Canada. Over the years, I did pay pre­mi­ums into my Employ­ment Insurance Account and I could have applied for it a cou­ple of times, includ­ing when work was slow or non-existent at the school when I taught French. So why didn’t I take advan­tage of it? I’m not sure. Part of it was stu­pid pride—I thought Canada was pretty nice to wel­come me as a per­ma­nent res­i­dent and that I should “prove” myself. Part of it was because Employ­ment Insur­ance ben­e­fits were a has­sle to apply for and it wasn’t much money in the first place—putting money aside for rainy days was an eas­ier solution.

All in all, over the years, the only money I received directly from the gov­ern­ment was the GST Credit (about $50 four times a year). And that’s only because I applied auto­mat­i­cally when fil­ing my income tax return.

Now, we will receive the monthly $100 Uni­ver­sal Child Care Ben­e­fit pay­ment, plus the Canada child tax ben­e­fit. Mind you, get­ting these ben­e­fits was a real has­sle. I signed up for them when reg­is­ter­ing Mark’s birth but the process was far from being smooth. I received no less than four let­ters from the Canada Rev­enue Agency ask­ing all kind of ques­tions, includ­ing our respec­tive dates of land­ing in Canada (?), as well as a com­plete recap of our immi­gra­tion sta­tus. I found it strange since we both have been Cana­dian cit­i­zens for years and we have been fil­ing tax income returns reg­u­larly. Even­tu­ally, I spent an hour over the phone with an employee to fig­ure every­thing out and ta-da! Three months later, the ben­e­fits finally arrived.

The money goes into a piggy bank and we are using it for dia­pers, for­mula, etc. After all, the point of this ben­e­fit is to help us with the cost of rais­ing a baby dragon.

So far, I don’t find babies as expen­sive as every­one says. I guess we didn’t go over­board with baby items—we only bought what we truly needed and didn’t give in in the per­fect nurs­ery dream. We buy dia­pers and for­mula in bulk when­ever we find good deals and I use coupons when avail­able. After all, a baby needs mommy and daddy’s love (and plenty of cud­dles!) more than any­thing else.

And for the rest… well, there will be the government’s dia­per and for­mula money.

Related arti­cles:

1. So, Are Babies That Expensive?
2. Dear Canada, Thank you For Your Health Care System
3. One Dragon Baby to Rule Them All—A Month Later, in Numbers
4. The “Too Much Infor­ma­tion” Arti­cle on Breastfeeding
5. A Pinch of Chi­nese, a Pinch of French—Our Bira­cial Baby
6. 10 Weird Con­se­quences of Hav­ing a Baby