Legally Speaking with Michael Mulligan
Aug 13, 2026 · 21 min · 6 segments
“Everyone gets the same benefit” sounds like the definition of fairness until you look at who gets squeezed when the rules change. We start with a Surrey teachers’ parental leave top-up dispute that…
Michael MulliganGuest
Adam StirlingHost
It says a human rights claim by teachers with nine children alleging discrimination based on, does that say adoptive versus birth parents to proceed? What's happening here?
Well, I guess one way to sum it up would be sort of the toothpaste tube getting squeezed around in different places in terms of top-ups paid to different kinds of parents when they have a new child.
And the particular background of this case is a claim brought by two teachers who are both employed, apparently, for a long period of time in a – the Surrey School District.
And they had a big family, lots of children in total, in this case involved the adoption of their ninth child.
And The underlying issue here is one involving who should be entitled to a financial top-up that would be available to you to supplement the amount of money you might be getting from the government when you're going on leave, when you're either having a child or adopting a child.
And the case actually, sort of the origin of how this thing came to be dates all the way back to 2012 when there was a complaint brought by a father, actually back to 1998, even earlier, 1998.
And it was a claim brought at that time by a birth father who made a complaint about being discriminated against on the basis that mothers would get this top up when they were taking leave after the birth of a child, but fathers would not.
And that was found to be discriminatory and it led to some changes, including changes to the eventually the collective agreement for the teachers in the Surrey School District.
And so they extended benefits to other groups other than mothers who gave birth to children to include fathers and adopted parents.
But the benefits that were being provided were benefits that were really a function of the terms of the collective agreement between the teachers and their employer.
And the issue that then arose was the fact that there were different categories of benefits you could get.
There were benefits that would be provided to birth mothers, like you would get some time off while pregnant or giving birth, And then there would be this additional time that would be provided if you were an adoptive parent or a father, for example, taking time off.
And these parents, the particulars who brought the claim, had taken benefit from this top-up as a result of the number of children they had had given birth to or adopted over the years.
And eventually, there came a complaint about the fairness of having different amounts of leave available when somebody was a father or an adoptive parent versus a mother who was having the child and then taking time off.
And the decision about that wound up being that it was not fair to have different amounts of time provided to people in those different categories.
That conclusion wound up going all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, who eventually sent it back to be dealt with as a matter of negotiation between the teachers and their employer.
And the outcome of that was to give everyone the same amount of top-up, regardless of whether you were an adoptive parent or you were a mother giving birth or you were a father, everyone would get the same.
And that decision eventually got implemented when this couple had adopted their ninth child.
Basically, what happened is that everyone got entitlement to the same thing, but less, right? That's what I mean by the toothpaste tube.
And so when a decision came that everyone should get the same, it meant for some people they got less entitlement.
And so the particular challenge brought in this case is a challenge brought by these parents in the context of having adopted a child.
It says a human rights claim by teachers with nine children alleging discrimination based on, does that say adoptive versus birth parents to proceed? What's happening here?
Well, I guess one way to sum it up would be sort of the toothpaste tube getting squeezed around in different places in terms of top-ups paid to different kinds of parents when they have a new child.
And the particular background of this case is a claim brought by two teachers who are both employed, apparently, for a long period of time in a – the Surrey School District.
And they had a big family, lots of children in total, in this case involved the adoption of their ninth child.
And The underlying issue here is one involving who should be entitled to a financial top-up that would be available to you to supplement the amount of money you might be getting from the government when you're going on leave, when you're either having a child or adopting a child.
And the case actually, sort of the origin of how this thing came to be dates all the way back to 2012 when there was a complaint brought by a father, actually back to 1998, even earlier, 1998.
And it was a claim brought at that time by a birth father who made a complaint about being discriminated against on the basis that mothers would get this top up when they were taking leave after the birth of a child, but fathers would not.
And that was found to be discriminatory and it led to some changes, including changes to the eventually the collective agreement for the teachers in the Surrey School District.
And so they extended benefits to other groups other than mothers who gave birth to children to include fathers and adopted parents.
But the benefits that were being provided were benefits that were really a function of the terms of the collective agreement between the teachers and their employer.
And the issue that then arose was the fact that there were different categories of benefits you could get.
There were benefits that would be provided to birth mothers, like you would get some time off while pregnant or giving birth, And then there would be this additional time that would be provided if you were an adoptive parent or a father, for example, taking time off.
And these parents, the particulars who brought the claim, had taken benefit from this top-up as a result of the number of children they had had given birth to or adopted over the years.
And eventually, there came a complaint about the fairness of having different amounts of leave available when somebody was a father or an adoptive parent versus a mother who was having the child and then taking time off.
And the decision about that wound up being that it was not fair to have different amounts of time provided to people in those different categories.
That conclusion wound up going all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, who eventually sent it back to be dealt with as a matter of negotiation between the teachers and their employer.
And the outcome of that was to give everyone the same amount of top-up, regardless of whether you were an adoptive parent or you were a mother giving birth or you were a father, everyone would get the same.
And that decision eventually got implemented when this couple had adopted their ninth child.
Basically, what happened is that everyone got entitlement to the same thing, but less, right? That's what I mean by the toothpaste tube.
And so when a decision came that everyone should get the same, it meant for some people they got less entitlement.
And so the particular challenge brought in this case is a challenge brought by these parents in the context of having adopted a child.
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