EI maternity benefits provide up to 15 weeks, paid at 55% of average insurable weekly earnings, up to a maximum that resets each January — $729 a week in 2026, based on maximum insurable earnings of $68,900. Parental benefits, taken by either parent, come in two options: standard parental pays 55% for up to 40 weeks combined between both parents (one parent alone can claim at most 35), while extended parental pays a lower 33% for up to 69 weeks combined (61 maximum for one parent alone), topping out at a lower weekly maximum of $437 in 2026.
Outside Quebec, this is delivered through federal Employment Insurance. Quebec residents instead access maternity and parental leave benefits through the province's own Québec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP), which has its own eligibility rules and benefit structure — worth flagging on any Quebec file so no one assumes federal EI figures apply there.
Whether delivered through EI or QPIP, the benefit itself is a fraction of the borrower's real earning power — 55% or 33% of pre-leave pay, not 100%. Qualifying a mortgage on the EI deposit amount alone would badly understate what the borrower actually earns once they're back at work, which is why lenders look through the benefit to the pre-leave employment income instead.
This is the document that unlocks the pre-leave income. A proper return-to-work letter, on company letterhead, states the borrower's original start date and position, the confirmed date they will return, and the confirmed salary or guaranteed hours they will return to. With that letter alongside the pre-leave T4 or pay stubs, a lender can typically use the full pre-leave employment income rather than the reduced benefit amount showing up in the borrower's bank account today.
Self-employed individuals can opt into the EI program to access maternity, parental, sickness, compassionate care and family caregiver benefits, provided they registered at least a full year before claiming and meet the program's self-employment earnings threshold. The documentation for a self-employed borrower on leave leans on the self-employment income history covered in Course 03 rather than an employer's return-to-work letter, since there's no employer to issue one.
Some programs want the confirmed return-to-work date to fall within a defined window of the mortgage closing; treat this as a category consideration to confirm with the specific lender rather than a fixed rule. And tenure still matters here exactly as it did in the intro: a borrower returning to a long-standing role with a clear employment history is a straightforward file, while a first maternity or parental leave taken shortly after starting a new job has very little pre-leave history to anchor the return-to-work income to.
A borrower is currently on standard parental leave, receiving EI deposits of roughly $2,900 a month. Before leave, her T4 and pay stubs showed a salary of $84,000 a year. What should the file be qualified on?
The pre-leave salary, backed by a return-to-work letter, reflects what the borrower actually earns once back at work — which is the real question, since the EI payment is only ever a temporary 55% replacement rate, not her ongoing earning capacity. Using the EI deposit is the tempting error because it's the number that's literally landing in her account right now, but 'currently verified' isn't the same as 'ongoing.' Splitting the difference has no basis in how either figure is meant to be used, and refusing to use leave income at all ignores that this is a routine, well-documented situation, not an unusual one.
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