A trio of B.C. mothers and elected officials is calling on the province to implement a provincewide standard for maternity and parental leaves for locally elected officials.
Former Nelson-Creston MLA Michelle Mungall, Squamish Coun. Jenna Stoner and School District 8 Kootenay Lake trustee Julie Bremner say in a joint letter that maternity and parental leave for locally elected representatives in British Columbia is “uncommon, inconsistent and uncertain.”
The letter is addressed to Housing and Municipal Affairs Minister Ravi Kahlon, Education and Child Care Minister Lisa Beare and Minister of State for Local Government and Rural Development Brittny Anderson.
Mungall, Stoner and Bremner said leave policies vary between councils and school districts, with no minimum standard in place. New parents must often seek a leave of absence through a majority vote of their municipal council or school board.
“This process makes one’s needs to heal postpartum and to care for infants or adopted children dependent on the goodwill of their colleagues around the table,” they said in the letter.
Mungall told Vista News that the issue came to light after all three had daughters around the same time in 2021.
“It is a systemic barrier to women’s participation in electoral offices at the local level, and we have to remove those barriers if everyone is truly going to be able to participate,” she said.
She noted that Nova Scotia and Ontario have amended their municipal government acts to enshrine maternity and parental leave rights for municipal councillors. Ontario has also updated its Education Act to protect the rights of school trustees to take similar leave.
The Union of B.C. Municipalities has called on the province to amend legislation for parental leave in five separate resolutions since 2016. The B.C. School Trustees Association supported a similar motion in 2017, asking that school trustees be allowed to take maternity or parental leave without requiring permission from their boards of education.
A 2024 UBCM resolution said current language in the Community Charter and Local Government Act does not protect elected officials’ right to leave for maternity, parental or caregiving reasons. It noted that local governments must revisit and renew elected officials’ leave policies each time a new council is elected.
A 2022 UBCM resolution called on the province to add provisions to the Local Government Act that would exempt new parents from being disqualified from office for absences exceeding 60 consecutive days or four regular scheduled meetings.
The provincial response to that resolution said legislating minimum standards for local elected officials’ parental leave would be “complex” and raise questions about whether elected officials qualify as employees under the Employment Standards Act.
The act entitles pregnant employees to up to 17 consecutive weeks of unpaid leave, with an option for six additional weeks if medically required.
“Under the existing legislation, local governments have broad authority to grant leave for many reasons, including parental leave, to locally elected officials,” the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs said in a statement Tuesday. It said the current approach offers more flexibility for local governments to tailor leave policies to their needs.
Mungall disagrees.
“The provincial government has a responsibility at the legislative level to provide guidance to these bodies,” she said. “They do so for so many things – why not maternity and parental leave?”
She said she has seen some momentum from the NDP government on the issue, noting she has held positive discussions with officials in Premier David Eby’s office, the Ministry of Housing and Municipal Affairs and the Education Ministry.
Mungall said both the UBCM and the School Trustees Association are still waiting for the province to take concrete steps toward amending the Community Charter and Local Government Act.
