Fertility declines have been taking place across Canada in a number of different provincial family policy contexts since the 1960’s. Although previous studies have assessed the impact of direct cost-reducing family policies in Canada, there is no body of work measuring the impact of indirect cost-reducing family policies across the county. The objective of this paper is to determine whether provincial variations in indirect cost-reducing family policy impact fertility. This paper uses provincial unpaid job-protected parental leave lengths as a proxy for indirect cost-reducing family policy contexts. Comparing multivariate and bivariate statistical analyses, I assess the impact of these policies on TFR by province and year from 1976 to 2006, controlling for male income, unemployment, female earnings, female labour force participation, and relative cohort size. It is determined that a positive correlation exists between fertility and unpaid job-protected leave, but whether this is a causal relationship is indeterminate
