EI after quitting or being fired for misconduct (2026)

Two things stop regular Employment Insurance benefits no matter how many hours you have: quitting a job without just cause, and losing one because of your own misconduct. Section 30 of the Employment Insurance Act calls it a disqualification, and it does not run out after a few weeks. It lasts until you build up enough insurable hours in new work to qualify all over again, which is 420 hours to 700 hours depending on your region. Both are legal tests decided by Service Canada, not by the words your employer writes on a form.

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

What section 30 says

"A claimant is disqualified from receiving any benefits if the claimant lost any employment because of their misconduct or voluntarily left any employment without just cause" (EI Act s. 30).

Two separate situations sit in that one sentence, and they are tested differently. If your employer ended the job, the question is whether what you did amounts to misconduct. If you ended it, the question is whether you had just cause to go. Everything else about the ending (the notice you got, the package you signed, the tone of the meeting) is a different area of law entirely.

What misconduct means here

Misconduct in the EI sense is narrower than "the employer was unhappy". It means conduct that was wilful, or so reckless that it comes to the same thing. Being fired is not by itself misconduct, and poor performance is not misconduct: someone who cannot do the job well enough, or who is not a fit, has not done something wilful.

That distinction is the whole fight in most files. A dismissal for missing targets, for being too slow, for a personality clash or for a restructuring dressed up as a performance problem is not the same thing as a dismissal for doing something you knew you should not do. Service Canada looks at what happened, not at the label on the paperwork.

Just cause for leaving is a legal test, not an opinion

"Just cause" in s. 29(c) is not the same as a good personal reason. The Act sets out a list of circumstances that can amount to just cause for leaving, and among them are harassment, working conditions that are a danger to health or safety, and a significant cut in your wages or your hours. The list in the section is longer than those three, and it is the section itself you should read before deciding what to write on your application. Source: EI Act s. 29.

Two things follow. First, a reason that feels overwhelming (a long commute, a bad manager who stays within the law, a better opportunity that fell through) may still not be on the list. Second, a reason that sounds small in conversation may be squarely on it. Do not decide either way from a summary, including this one. Read s. 29(c) and describe what happened in your own words on the application.

Who decides, and on what

Service Canada decides, on the record in front of it. That record starts with your employer's record of employment, which carries a reason code for why the job ended. The code opens the question; it is not the answer, and an employer's code cannot disqualify you on its own. How the form is laid out is on the ROE page.

You are asked for your side, and it is worth taking that seriously the first time rather than after a decision. If the decision goes against you, there are two steps in order: a request that Service Canada reconsider its own decision, and then an appeal to the Social Security Tribunal. Both have deadlines, and this site does not publish them. Get the date that applies to your own decision letter from Service Canada, in writing, on the day the letter reaches you.

What this site will never do is tell you how a claim will come out. Nobody can. Two files with the same one-line summary are decided differently on the facts underneath it.

What a disqualification actually costs

A disqualification under s. 30 is not a penalty week or two. Until you work enough insurable hours in new employment to meet your region's requirement again, there are no regular benefits, and the hours you had at the old job cannot be reused to get around it.

Ellie is disqualified after leaving a job. Her region's requirement is somewhere between 420 hours and 700 hours, depending on where she lives and the rate for the period her next claim would start in. At 35 hours a week of insurable work, that is 12 weeks of full-time work at the bottom of the table and 20 weeks at the top. At half those hours, double the weeks. That is the size of the thing, and it is why the reason for leaving is worth thinking about before you hand in a resignation, not after.

What your employer still owes you

EI and employment standards are two different statutes, decided by two different bodies, and they can land in different places. A dismissal that Service Canada treats as misconduct is not automatically the "wilful misconduct" or "just cause" that lets an employer withhold notice under your provincial or territorial Act, and the bar in most employment standards statutes is a high one.

Some money is not touched by either question. Vacation pay you have earned and not been paid is owed whatever the reason your job ended, and so are wages for hours already worked. What survives a for-cause dismissal is set out in fired for cause: what you are still owed, and the jurisdiction pages under severance and termination pay carry the standard your own statute uses.

If you quit, the same split applies from the other side: quitting removes your notice entitlement under employment standards law, but it does not touch the vacation pay you have already earned. How much notice you owe when you quit has the rules by jurisdiction.

What is different right now

The temporary measures below change the waiting period, the treatment of separation money and the number of weeks for some workers. None of them touches ss. 29 and 30. A disqualification is a disqualification for as long as the Act says so.