This is far from universal. In my state (California) the cost is distributed among all employers as part of an “unemployment insurance” scheme. Everyone who employs someone pays a small amount each month to cover things like family leave. (Yes, labor economics tells us that this really means that all employees are paying this amount.) but it’s not all taxpayers, and it’s not a progressive tax (meaning everyone pays about the same, rich people don’t pay more as they do for other government programs).

Given your other comment, though, it sounds like your concern isn’t “taxpayers” paying for family leave, it’s you. So yes, ultimately, you, productive member of society, might be paying for other, “unproductive” members of society (as defined by you) to have kids.

You sound grumpy about this arrangement. Of course, as an upstanding citizen, you’ve never taken advantage of incentives or benefits paid for by other taxpayers, right? And of course you’ve never had the assistance of a government program, or it was different because it was for something “not in your control” — unlike having kids.

This attitude rubs me the wrong way, hence my less-than-civil response. It’s like the people who hate public transit because they only drive, not realizing that public transit takes other cars off the road and improves their own commutes. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.

and so what? the tax payer pays for a lot of things that it makes sense for the tax payer to pay for. at least with health insurance you can bemoan paying for other people's irresponsible lifestyle but with maternity leave almost everyone withdraws from the trust in the same way?

Presenting facts: reality in my country tells that universal maternity and paternity leaves are the most abused systems and tax payers are not happy with this. The low income people have a huge number of children (2 sisters with 33 kids in total were most discussed) just to live on taxpayers money, they never worked between childbirths. Also there are so many people pay huge taxes and never qualify to get anything in return (have no kids).

Many people here believe that caring for your kids should be the parent's responsibility, not anybody else's.

>Presenting facts: reality in my country tells that universal maternity and paternity leaves are the most abused systems and tax payers are not happy with this.

googling "canada paternity maternity leave abuse" gets no matching hits. show me

>The low income people have a huge number of children (2 sisters with 33 kids in total were most discussed) just to live on taxpayers money, they never worked between childbirths.

average number of children in canada in 2011 was less than 2.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2014002...

how many standard deviations away from that mean is ~16 children? so you're talking about decrying a social policy that overwhelmingly improves outcomes for women, children, and communities

https://www.milbank.org/wp-content/uploads/mq/volume-96/sept...

because some poor person somewhere once had a bunch of kids.

these are distorted facts (or what we in /my/ country, like to call fake news).

Well, here there are 2 categories of people (with exceptions, of course): people that have 1-2 kids and take a very short leave and people that have 5-15 kids just to live on the checks they get for the kids. You don't have that yet because we started a long time ago, but it does not mean you will not repeat the history, again and again. So yes, you are right, it works now in Canada, we were there 30-40 years ago. Look where we are today before answering.