Multiple births benefits being revisited

Finally the issue of multiple births benefits is being discussed. The CBC ran a story yesterday about a Calgary mom of triplets wanting equal benefits to singletons. Currently, it doesn't matter whether you have 1,2,3 or 6 kids: you get 1 year of leave. Our twins club has been a longstanding member and supporter of Multiple Births of Canada who have been lobbying for increased benefits and they jumped all over this story. There have been a huge number of comments on the CBC web site, though it's not accepting or showing comments for me right now for some reason. As a parent of multiples, I totally agree with her request. While many commenters have agreed with increased benefits, a number have disagreed. They argue that the benefit is for the single birthing "event" and just to cover the first year after a birth event. It wouldn't be fair to give more to multiple parents than singleton parents. However, that misses the real point. The point of the benefit is to compensate parents for the financial cost and opportunity cost of raising children, and to hopefully improve the child's life by providing more time with parent(s). There's two ways to do the math to show how unfair the current arrangement is. The first way is to compare the actual compensation. In the triplet situation, the parents get 1 year of EI benefits. Conversely, our friends who have 3 kids get 3 years of EI benefits. The second comparison is the time spent with the children. With triplets, the parent(s) spend the 1 year with all 3 kids. By necessity, there is less time per child than with singletons. We've regularly commented that it's usually only singleton parents that get the kids out to baby sign classes, swimming classes, music class and all the very important parent social events like mom's groups, coffee shop meetups, mom 'n stroller fitness classes, etc. We've never seen triplets at any of these events. Conversely, with 3 non-multiple children, the parent(s) get 1 year with the first, then 1 year with the first and second, then 1 year with the first, second and third. Usually the oldest and even second are in a form of preschool so that the parent can spend time with the newest child. This naturally leads to very close relationships between parent and child. I think I've proven by time and by money that the current system is unfair. The fair thing to do is to increase the compensation to a per child compensation rather than a per pregnancy compensation. I'm not sure whether it should be 1 year per child or 1 year for first child + 6 months per additional child. It seems to me the fairest thing is 1 year per child because that makes the compensation equal between singleton and multiple families.