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Jan 20th, 2026
Family Law
Surrogacy in Canada: The Unseen Weight of Unpaid Labour
Jan 26th, 2026
By Carolyn Booth
Across Canada, every year, thousands of intended parents wait (sometimes for years) hoping to be matched with someone willing to carry the child they dream of. Women across Canada, where surrogacy is unpaid, are evaluating whether they are willing to act as surrogates1, dedicating their body, time, and emotional energy to helping another family grow.
Under the federal legislation, the Assisted Human Reproduction Act (2004), Canadian legislators have chosen an unpaid model of surrogacy, offered referred to as “altruistic” surrogacy. This means that a surrogate cannot be paid for her work as a surrogate; she may only receive reimbursement for pregnancy‑related expenses. The intention behind the law may have been to protect surrogates from exploitation, and prevent the commodification of a human child, however, whose decision should it be to decide whether the work a surrogate performs should be paid or unpaid? Shouldn’t the surrogate have a choice in the matter?
If paid surrogacy were allowed in Canada, surrogates would still have the choice to act as surrogates for payment, or without payment.
Because surrogacy remains unpaid, far fewer people are willing, or able, to take on the enormous physical and emotional responsibility of carrying a child for someone else. Each year, Canada sees an estimated 400 to 500 babies born through surrogacy. In comparison, the United States, where compensated surrogacy is legal, around 5,000 children are born from surrogates annually2.
The scarcity of surrogates in Canada is one factor in favour of revisiting paid surrogacy in Canada, but more importantly, it is essential to recognize the value of the work a surrogate does.
In your opinion, should surrogacy be paid in Canada?
[1] Note that according to the language of the Civil Code of Quebec, the word “surrogate” is not used, but the term used is “the woman or the person who has agreed to give birth to a child.” The use of the word surrogate in this text is merely for ease of the reader.
