People commonly lose their job on maternity or parental leave. Critics say EI needs an overhaul

What happens to your employment insurance when you lose your job before returning from a maternity or parental leave?

It's a question often asked in parenting groups, queried onsocial media or posed to employment lawyers as Canadian parents increasingly find themselves in this situation amid a cooling labour market and mass layoffs in several sectors, such as media and the tech industry.

«I've never seen layoffs like this in my life, and I've been doing this for 20 years,» Allison Venditti, a human resources expert in Toronto, told CBC News. She's also the founder of advocacy group Moms at Work, Canada's largest organization for working mothers, with 7,500 members.

Companies are cutting ranks, Venditti said, and parents who are on leave aren't immune.

In fact, when companies are laying off employees due to economic issues, they feel more open to laying off those who are on protected leave, said Andrew Monkhouse, managing partner at Toronto employment law firm Monkhouse Law and an adjunct professor at York University's Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto.

«It's a persistent problem in Canada,» he said in an interview.

And that can leave new parents in a financial lurch. Under the current federal employment insurance (EI) system, parents cannot combine unemployment and parental leave benefits. That has critics calling for an overhaul of the system.

On Thursday, New Democrat MP Daniel Blaikie sent a letter urging Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault to change the EI rules immediately, calling the current ones «punitive and discriminatory.»

In his letter to Boissonnault, Blaikie wrote, «Women in Canada have waited long enough for justice in the employment insurance system,» adding, «Just get it done.»

In a statement emailed to CBC