opinion: it's time for canadian employers to step into a bigger role in fertility care for workers
4 minute read
roxy and evert went through a lot to have baby kian, a journey that could have been easier with more help from their employers.
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toronto couple roxy and evert welcomed kian into their family in late 2024.
kian is a healthy baby boy with a cherubic smile and a shock of dark hair on top of his head that makes him resemble a little professor.
while kian is enjoying an ideal infancy, the effort to bring him into roxy and evert’s lives was far from ideal. kian’s journey took five years and cost the couple $60,000. roxy endured three rounds of in-vitro fertilization (ivf), four rounds of intrauterine insemination (iui), plus countless blood samples, clinic visits and intrusive ultrasounds.
by the second round of ivf, roxy had fallen into a depression. by the third and final round, she quit her job as an hr recruiter to focus solely on the treatment.
“at first i didn’t tell anyone,” she said about the beginning of the journey. “as a woman, you’re worried this could affect your career progression. then i started opening up about it. the education around it was so minimal, but it’s hard to be the educator on top of going through everything.”
while the high cost of living has brought fertility and family-building into focus as an economic and social issue, many couples delay starting a family for reasons beyond finances. these range from career stability to access to care. but as couples wait to have children, conceiving becomes a bigger challenge that can test the limits of the mental, physical and financial strength of both parents-to-be.
it’s time for employers to take a bigger role in supporting workers who are having challenges building their families, especially if they want to retain top talent, improve productivity, and strengthen employee relationships.
employers need to better understand the complete impact of family-building challenges like those evert and roxy endured. they have employees going through it right now, and don’t even know it.
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about one in six canadian couples experience infertility while trying to conceive (not including 2slgbtqia+ couples and single parents). while this has led to a booming fertility care industry, only about two per cent of live births every year in canada—over 7000 babies—are a result of ivf or other fertility treatment. the gap isn’t due to a lack of need, but a lack of access.
fertility and family-building, which includes adoption and surrogacy, is currently seen as a luxury good with prices ranging from about $1,300 for an iui cycle, to about $13,000 for an ivf cycle, to over $80,000 for a surrogate birth. it’s only accessible to couples with the financial resources to endure a long, stressful and often invisible journey.
only the largest and richest corporations in canada—banks and large tech companies—offer thorough fertility support to their workers. other organizations believe they offer fertility care, but they usually only cover drug costs, which are a small portion of total expenses for even the most standard treatment.
perhaps surprisingly, employer-sponsored fertility care is more available in the united states (over 42 per cent of u.s. employers offer coverage, compared to five per cent in canada). some canadian employers have a misconception that provincial health providers cover ivf and fertility treatment costs, so they don’t have to worry about it.
the first step to expanding fertility care is to educate employers and employees about access to treatment. there is no federal standard for fertility care in canada. while many provinces, such as ontario, offer to pay for one round of ivf to help a couple conceive, most couples experiencing problems conceiving will need multiple rounds.
some provinces offer no treatment at all, just a tax credit for a portion of the costs. if they do offer coverage for ivf cycles, those patients are often put on a long wait list to access the limited number of funded cycles.
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in roxy and evert’s case, they had one round of ivf covered by ontario’s health system, for which they had to wait two years. even then, only certain costs were covered. they still had to pay for medications and embryo testing.
employers and health-care experts must also learn that the longer couples wait to pursue fertility, the more difficult and expensive it gets for a successful pregnancy. if fertility care is available to employees as soon as possible, everybody will be happier.
the bottom line is that employers need to understand their employees are already going through fertility journeys and many are coping in silence, fearing stigma or career repercussions. they can’t ask for help without putting themselves at risk.
roxy describes the pain of having to continue working after hearing bad news.
“i didn’t take any time off work. everything suffers: sleep, work, relationships. i feel it shortened my life.”
the solution starts with education and awareness. individuals need to know their options early, and employers need to understand that timely access to fertility care improves outcomes, lowers long-term costs for both the organization and employees, and results in healthier and engaged employees.
“there’s a lot of things people say or ask that seemed to be well-intentioned, that were actually really painful to have to respond to,” roxy said when she told co-workers about her fertility treatment.
she hopes that better education can help more families get the help they need to build their families.
fertility care is healthcare. and it’s time canadian employers start treating it that way.
jackie hanson is the co-founder & ceo of sprout family, a digital health platform that expands access to fertility care for canadian workers.
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