I guess it must be the Trade Union Rep coming out in me but I really cringe at Labour laws in Canada.  In fact North America as a whole are far from getting “work-life balance” right.

The first thing that really hit me when working in a full time job in Canada was the lack of annual leave/vacation days.  Having been used to the number of days being upper 30′s and more moving here has been a great shock to my system with only 15 days a year!!  Yes, you heard me right, only 15 days!!  That is considered to be very generous too…even though my reaction was….is that it???

Firstly not having any vacation in the first year is totally ridiculous, everyone needs a break from the office, why discriminate against those who have just joined the organization?  10 to 15 days is also ridiculous too, you cannot possibly take just one day off to de-stress because that eats up into at least 10% of your allowance.  I have certainly seen staff take more sick leave than in the UK and lack of paid vacation is likely one reason for it.

Paid annual leave entitlement tends to vary across Canada but being in British Columbia I looked up the minimum requirements set out in legislation here.  In the first year of employment a company doesn’t need to give you any annual leave at all.  In the second year of employment the legal minimum is 10 days.  After 5 years of being with the same company you are then entitled to an additional 5 days.  This is detailed on the Labour Canada website.  I have noticed also that in Canada you build up your annual leave, for example you get 1 day for every 1 month worked, so when can you take your first 2 weeks annual leave?

When you compare the equivalent Labour Canada website to the UK version at DirectGov you can see that the Canada site is a mess.  The UK Governments site is structured well, it is easy to find the information, they use Plain English, and no long unnecessary paragraphs of verbal crap.

In the UK, if you are a full time employee, it is law that you receive 5.6 weeks annual leave (equivalent to 28 days) in your first year.  You obviously can’t take your annual leave whenever you want and need approval from line management to do so and give appropriate notice but in the first two years of employment in the UK you would have got 56 days annual leave, in Canada you would have only got 10!  10 days in 2 years is not work-life balance, it is slave labour.  It has been proved time and time again in the UK that increases in annual leave does not harm the economy and in fact can only benefit the company as staff are more productive after a break, read this interesting press statement about change in legislation that the TUC pressed for.

If your company is generous in Canada then they might offer you flexi-time, close the company during holidays, give you 15 days off and other benefits but not everyone is generous, they will just give employees what is legislatively required.  There definitely needs to be a change in law to ensure employees get a better deal.  Just because Canada is a neighbour to the USA doesn’t mean it has to copy everything it does.