Canada's family-oriented workplace policies give the country a competitive advantage over the United States, says the author of a scathing report about such policies south of the border.
The study chastises Washington for, among other things, failing to offer paid maternity leave or paid sick days.
"In Canada, the good news is much of this is already in place," said study co-author Jody Heymann, director of McGill's Institute for Health and Social Policy and founder of the Harvard-based Project on Global Working Families.
"In the United States, where fewer of these protections are in place, there is really a great hunger for doing something about it."
The study - The Work, Family and Equity Index: How Does the United States Measure Up? - compares U.S. policies with the rest of the world, with some surprising results.
* The U.S. is among only five countries of the 173 surveyed that doesn't guarantee some form of paid maternity leave.
* While at least 134 countries have laws setting the maximum length of the work week, the U.S. does not.
* As many as 145 countries offer paid sick days, and 127 provide a week or more annually. There is no federal law in the U.S. providing for paid sick days.
"Countries that do invest in families - that invest in our ability to work and raise kids - are the more competitive," Heymann said in a phone interview from Washington.
The study has caused a stir south of border as U.S. legislators debate whether to cut back existing unpaid family leaves or begin offering paid leaves.
Business groups on both sides of the border argue that overly generous family policies come at the cost of economic growth.
Heymann's study counters those claims, noting that most economically competitive countries offer family support.
"The data does not support the concern that good working conditions lead to job loss," the report reads. "None of these protections is associated with higher unemployment rates on a national level."
The benefit of improving working conditions is reaped in lower family poverty rates and in better health and education among the general population, the study suggests.
But Heymann stressed that what while "there's a lot of good news about Canada," there are some areas where the country lags.
She pointed out that there is still no federal protection in Canada for women who breast-feed at work.
She also said that many innovative policies exist at the provincial level, but have yet to be implemented on the national scale.
"Provinces like Quebec have very advanced, by any global standard, programs on childcare," Heymann said. "But there's not yet one on the national level that some other countries would have."
