Agree Daycare123 .... I think for me my concern is that you have to pay into it for a WHOLE YEAR first before being able to make a claim ~ so it would not even work for poor Mamma_Mia this time anyway since she has already conceived and does not have a year to invest before her maternity leave arrives

Than assuming you are planning ahead type and have that full year invested in the program before you 'need it' when you do want to use it your eligibility is based your previous tax year only ... so since our business has ebbs and flows or feast or famine years where you are either full and turning people away or it is dry as the desert out there and so if that year SUCKED and you had open spaces and so forth your 'benefits' would be the 55% of that extra tiny sucky years income even if the years prior you had had AWESOME years being full and so forth

Also worth looking into having your own 'disability' insurance and if the premiums on that would be 'more or less' than the EI one and whether having a baby would be covered under 'short term disability preventing you from working' at least for the 6 week 'recovery' time of having had a baby or c section and so forth ... many of them come with a 'investment' pay back AKA if you never USE the plan when you decide to close it out you can buy back a portion of your premiums to transfer to an RRSP or what not ... personally I would be more inclined to do THAT than invest in a government run program!