Dissecting Perks
Vancouver Sun
September 6, 2008

Sure, Canadians like to be safe, but life insurance as a top-rated job perk? It's not as sexy as a club membership or a fat expense account. Or -- more practically -- child care.

Life insurance came out on top of a survey by the Canadian Payroll Association released Friday because the poll ranked 39 categories of taxable employee benefits in terms of the percentage of organizations that offered them…. Child-care expenses rank at the very bottom, but that's because only two per cent of workplaces pick up that cost. So, while many parents want child care, it's too expensive to offer across the board, explained Steven Van Alstine, a vice-president with the payroll association.

"The people that tend to benefit most from child care are the people that can afford it less. [They] tend to be people that aren't in management or executive roles where commonly more expensive benefits are provided to the employee," he said. "If an employer were going to provide child-care benefits ... it would have to be provided to all employees and would be very costly for the organization."

Hmm. So it's something that the people who need it most can't get. Smells like it could be an election issue -- again.