What you're owed when your job ends in Canada (2026)

When your job ends in Canada, your employer owes you a short list of things, and the employment standards statute where you work spells out every one of them: written notice of termination or the pay that replaces it, the vacation pay you've earned and haven't been paid, the stat holidays that fall in your notice period, and all of it by a deadline the statute sets. Ontario and federally regulated workplaces add a separate statutory severance pay on top of notice, worth up to 26 weeks of pay in Ontario. This site has those figures for all fourteen Canadian jurisdictions, each one beside the section of the statute it comes from, and a calculator that does the math on your dates and your pay.

Updated September 6, 2026 · Figures verified against the statutes of each jurisdiction · see all figures and their sources

Where do you work?

Severance pay
Notice, termination pay, vacation pay and the statutory severance of up to 26 weeks in Ontario, for all 14 jurisdictions.
EI
Regular EI pays 55% of your best weeks, capped at $729.00 per week. Hours needed and weeks paid depend on your EI region.
Ontario
Ontario notice runs to 8 weeks, statutory severance adds up to 26 weeks, and the final pay is due in 7 days.
British Columbia
BC compensation for length of service runs to 8 weeks, vacation pay is 4% or more, and the final pay is due in 48 hours.
Alberta
Alberta notice runs from 1 week to 8 weeks once you pass 90 days. No separate severance pay, and holiday pay is the average daily wage.
Quebec
Quebec notice runs to 8 weeks, vacation pay is 4% or 6%, and a collective dismissal starts at 10 employees.
Manitoba
Manitoba notice runs to 8 weeks after 30 days, and a group termination can mean 18 weeks. Final pay is due in 10 days.
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan notice runs to 8 weeks after 13 weeks of service, a layoff needs the same notice, and vacation pay starts at 5.77%.
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia notice runs to 8 weeks after 3 months, group notice starts at 8 weeks, and long service bars dismissal without just cause.
New Brunswick
New Brunswick notice is 2 weeks, then 4 weeks, the shortest ladder in Canada, and it starts only after 6 months.
Newfoundland and Labrador
Notice in Newfoundland and Labrador reaches 6 weeks after 3 months of service, you owe the same when you quit, and the final pay is due in 7 days.
Prince Edward Island
Notice on PEI runs from 1 week to 8 weeks once you have 90 days of service. No separate severance pay, and a brand-new Act.
Yukon
Yukon's notice ladder has eight rungs: 7 weeks at seven years and 8 weeks at the top. Vacation stays at 4%, and the final pay is due in 7 days.
Northwest Territories
In the NWT notice starts at 2 weeks once you have 90 days and rises to 8 weeks. No statutory severance, and the final pay is due in 10 days.
Nunavut
Nunavut notice runs from 2 weeks to 8 weeks after 90 days, the final pay is due in 10 days, and there is no deadline to complain.
Federally regulated workplaces
Federally regulated: notice from 2 weeks, severance of 2 days per completed year with no ceiling, final pay in 30 days.

How this works, in three steps

Pick your jurisdiction. Employment standards are provincial and territorial, with one big exception. If your employer is in an industry Parliament regulates, the Canada Labour Code applies instead of your province's Act: banks, airlines, railways, interprovincial trucking, telecom and broadcasting, ports and shipping, pipelines that cross a border, and most Crown corporations. Those workplaces belong on the federally regulated page, wherever in the country you live.
Use the calculator on that page. Every jurisdiction page carries the same tool, preset to that statute. Give it your first and last day of work, your regular pay, how the job ended and how much working notice you actually got. It gives back the notice you're owed, the pay in lieu of the notice you didn't get, statutory severance where the statute has one, the vacation pay still owing, the total minimum, and the date your final pay is due. The hub has the same tool with a jurisdiction selector if you want to compare.
Check the section. Every figure the calculator uses is printed on the page with the section that sets it and a link to the official version of the Act. You don't have to take the number on trust, and neither does whoever you show it to.

What changes when you cross a provincial line

The shape is much the same everywhere. The amounts aren't, and neither are the names. Notice goes up with your length of service in all fourteen jurisdictions, but the service you need before any notice is owed, the size of each step and the ceiling are different in each statute. A separate statutory severance pay, paid on top of notice, exists in only two of the fourteen: Ontario and the federal jurisdiction. Everywhere else, what people call severance is termination pay, the pay that stands in for notice. Vacation pay is a percentage of the wages you earned, and both the percentage and the service at which it goes up are set by each statute. The deadline for your final pay runs from a fixed number of days after your last day to the next regular pay day, depending on where you work.

One more thing about that word. The severance package your employer puts in front of you is an offer, not the law. The statute sets the floor, the offer sits somewhere above it or below it, and working out which is exactly what the calculator is for.

Here's the short version for notice. Each jurisdiction page has the full schedule, the exclusions, the vacation and holiday rules, and the deadline to file a complaint.

Notice of termination across Canada in 2026: the statutory minimum in each jurisdiction
Jurisdiction	Service needed	Notice (min–max)	Statute
Ontario	3 months	1–8 weeks	ESA s. 57
British Columbia	3 months	1–8 weeks	BC ESA s. 63
Alberta	90 days	1–8 weeks	ESC s. 56
Quebec	3 months	1–8 weeks	LSA s. 82
Manitoba	30 days	1–8 weeks	ESC s. 61
Saskatchewan	13 weeks	1–8 weeks	SEA s. 2-60
Nova Scotia	3 months	1–8 weeks	LSC s. 72
New Brunswick	6 months	2–4 weeks	ESA s. 30
Newfoundland and Labrador	3 months	1–6 weeks	NL LSA s. 55
Prince Edward Island	90 days	1–8 weeks	PEI ESA s. 59
Yukon	6 months	1–8 weeks	Yukon ESA s. 50
Northwest Territories	90 days	2–8 weeks	NWT ESA s. 38
Nunavut	90 days	2–8 weeks	Nunavut LSA s. 14.03
Federally regulated workplaces	3 months	2–8 weeks	CLC s. 230

Reviewed on September 6, 2026. Each row links to that jurisdiction and to the section of its statute.

Two more differences are worth knowing before you read your own page. Quebec's Act respecting labour standards is drafted differently from the rest and speaks of an indemnity equal to the wages for the notice period. The site still covers Quebec in the same detail as everywhere else, in English, on the Quebec page. And every statute has its exclusions: dismissal for wilful misconduct or just cause as that statute defines it, fixed-term contracts that simply run out, temporary layoffs still inside the limit, and turning down reasonable alternative work. Those are set out page by page, because no two statutes word the test the same way.

Employment Insurance after your job ends

What your employer owes you is half the question. The other half is EI, which is federal and works the same way across the country, with one local variable that changes a lot: the economic region you live in. Your region sets how many insurable hours you need to qualify, how many weeks of benefits you can draw, and how many of your best weeks of earnings go into the amount.

The EI section has an estimator. Give it your insurable hours and your average weekly insurable earnings, and it tells you whether you have the hours your region needs, what your weekly benefit works out to and how many weeks you'd get. It also shows something people usually find out too late: severance, termination pay and vacation pay paid out when you leave are allocated to the weeks after your job ends, and that pushes back the start of your benefits. Your employer also has to issue a record of employment (ROE) before Service Canada can process the claim. The full regional table, stamped with the exact period it covers, is on the regions page, and every province and territory has its own page with its regions and a worked example.

Why you can check every figure here

Legal figures go stale quietly. A page that was right in 2019 is still up, still ranking, and nobody who wrote it has opened the Act since. This site is built so that can't happen by neglect.

Every figure lives in one data file. Pages don't hold numbers. They ask the data file for a figure by name, and it arrives with its section, the dates it applies between, its verification status and the day it was last checked. Fix it once and every page, table, title and calculator that uses it is fixed at the same time.
An unverified figure can't reach a published page. Each figure carries one of three states: verified against the statute or regulation itself, secondary when only a reliable non-official source or our own math supports it, or unverified. If a page that's about to be published asks for an unverified figure, the build stops and produces nothing. That's a check in the program, not a good intention.
The sources are the statutes, not the guides. Figures are read from the official version of the Act or regulation, published by the legislature or the King's Printer of that jurisdiction, and the section is cited. Government guides are useful for spotting that something has changed; they're never the source of a figure here, and no text is copied from them.
The EI table is re-read every four weeks. Regional unemployment rates move on a fixed four-week cycle, and the hours and weeks move with them. Each cycle the table is fetched, compared against the last one and archived, and the period it covers is printed on every page that uses it, so you can see at a glance whether what you're reading is current.

The whole procedure, including what happens when a figure has to be worked out rather than read, is in the methodology. Every figure the site holds, with its section, its validity and its status, is listed in official figures, and the data file itself is published under a Creative Commons licence at /data/legal-data-2026.json.

What you type stays in your browser

The calculators run in your own browser. Your dates, your pay and your answers aren't sent anywhere, aren't stored, and never show up in the page's address. There are no forms on this site, no sign-up, no newsletter, no comments and, today, no cookies. You can test it: load a page, turn off your connection, and the tool still works.

What this site is, and what it isn't

Owed at Work is written and kept current by one person, Sergio, its editor, who is not a lawyer. That's why the site publishes its method and its sources instead of asking you to trust a credential. The figures here are statutory minimums: the floor your employment standards Act guarantees. They aren't a prediction of what you could get.

Outside Quebec, courts award reasonable notice at common law that is often well above the statutory minimum, and a written contract or a collective agreement can promise more than either. This site doesn't estimate common law amounts and doesn't tell you whether your dismissal was lawful. If either question matters to you, talk to an employment lawyer, and take the statutory figure from here with you. Who writes this and how it gets paid for is in about; corrections and questions go to contact.

Frequently asked questions

Is any of this legal advice?

No. Owed at Work publishes what the employment standards statutes say, section by section, and does the math those sections describe. It doesn't know your contract, your collective agreement or how you were let go, and reading it creates no professional relationship. For your own situation you want an employment lawyer, or the employment standards office in your province or territory, which answers questions about a claim for free.

Does it cover Quebec?

Yes, in the same detail as the rest, in English. Quebec's labour standards Act has its own structure and its own vocabulary, and the site follows the English version and cites its sections. The site is English only; there is no French version.

How do I know if I'm federally regulated?

It depends on the industry your employer is in, not on who signs your paycheque or where the head office sits. Banks, air transport, railways and interprovincial trucking, telecom and broadcasting, ports and shipping, pipelines and canals that cross a boundary, grain elevators, uranium mining and most Crown corporations fall under the Canada Labour Code. Everyone else falls under the province or territory where they work. The federal page sets out the test and what changes if it applies to you.

What about common law notice, the number lawyers talk about?

It's real, it applies outside Quebec, and this site doesn't calculate it. Courts award reasonable notice on facts a calculator can't see: your age, your job, how long you were there, and how hard a comparable job is to find. It's often well above the statutory minimum, and signing a release usually gives it up. That's the single best reason to have a lawyer look at an offer before you sign it. What you get here is the floor underneath that conversation.

How often are the figures updated?

The EI regional table is re-read every four weeks, and the period it covers is printed on every page that uses it. The employment standards figures get a full review each January, when most annual amounts change, and an immediate one whenever an amending Act or regulation touches a figure the site publishes. Every figure carries the day it was last checked, and you can see all of them in official figures.