Fired during probation (2026): what you're still owed in every jurisdiction

"Probation" is a word from your contract, not from your employment standards Act. What the statutes actually set is a qualifying period of service before any notice of termination is owed, and it is different in every jurisdiction: as short as 30 days in Manitoba and as long as 6 months in New Brunswick and Yukon. Below that line your employer can end the job without notice and without termination pay. Above it, the schedule applies whatever your contract calls the period. Either way, three things are still owed: your unpaid wages, your accrued vacation pay, and any holiday pay your Act gives you. This page is part of the severance pay hub.

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

The qualifying service in all fourteen jurisdictions

The middle column of this table is the one to read. It is the continuous service you need before the notice schedule starts working for you.

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

The same rule, written five different ways

The statutes do not even agree on the unit, which is why comparing them from memory goes wrong. Written out by jurisdiction, straight from each Act:

• Manitoba has the shortest, 30 days (ESC s. 62). A probationary period in a collective agreement of a year or less replaces it.
• Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador and federally regulated jobs all use 3 months (ESA s. 54, BC ESA s. 63, LSA s. 82.1, LSC s. 72, NL LSA s. 55, CLC s. 230).
• Alberta, Prince Edward Island, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut count in days instead: 90 days (ESC s. 55, PEI ESA s. 59, NWT ESA s. 37, Nunavut LSA s. 14.03). It looks like three months, and it is not quite.
• Saskatchewan counts in weeks: 13 weeks (SEA s. 2-60), and your period of employment is unbroken unless an interruption runs longer than the Act allows.
• New Brunswick and Yukon have the longest wait in Canada, 6 months (ESA s. 30, Yukon ESA s. 50).

The distinction between days and months matters in practice, because they do not land on the same date. A threshold counted in days is the same number of days no matter which months you worked; a threshold counted in calendar months moves with the calendar. Two people let go on the same date, one in Alberta and one in Ontario, can fall on opposite sides of their own line. If your last day is anywhere near your threshold, count it out on a calendar before you accept that nothing is owed.

What "probation" in your contract can and cannot do

A probationary period is a contractual arrangement. Employers use it to set expectations, shorten a review cycle or make it clear that confirmation is not automatic. None of that changes the Act. Two consequences follow, and they run in opposite directions.

First, a contract cannot take away the statutory notice once you are past the qualifying service. If your contract says "six months' probation, no notice during probation" and your Act's threshold is shorter than that, the Act wins for the period between the two: you are owed the schedule's notice or the pay in lieu even though your employer considers you probationary. Manitoba is the one place where a collective-agreement probation is written into the section itself.

Second, a contract cannot invent an entitlement the Act does not give. Being called "permanent" on day one does not move your jurisdiction's threshold. What it can do is promise you more than the statute, and a promise of that kind is enforceable as a contract term. Read the letter you signed, not the handbook.

What you are still owed below the threshold

This is the part people get wrong most often. Falling below the qualifying service removes the notice and the pay in lieu. It removes nothing else.

• Your unpaid wages, including overtime, for every hour you worked. There is no service threshold for being paid for work done, and each Act sets a deadline for the final pay. Those deadlines are compared in final pay deadlines by province.
• Your accrued vacation pay. Vacation pay is a percentage of the wages you earned, and it starts accruing from the beginning of the job in every jurisdiction, long before you have earned the right to take time off. Saskatchewan owes it on every dollar that has not already had vacation pay paid on it, whether or not you completed a year (SEA s. 2-29); Newfoundland and Labrador owes it once you have worked a handful of consecutive days (NL LSA s. 9); Yukon attaches a short minimum period to the part-year percentage (Yukon ESA s. 25). See vacation pay when your job ends.
• Holiday pay for any statutory holiday that fell while you were employed. Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island and federally regulated jobs set no length-of-service test for it at all. British Columbia, Alberta, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut each impose one, and the tests are written differently in every case. They are laid out in statutory holiday pay by province.

Statutory severance pay is the one thing that really is out of reach at this stage, everywhere: Ontario's needs 5 years and the federal one needs 12 months.

A worked example: the same short job, two provinces

Noor is hired at $900 for a regular work week and is let go part-way through her third month, having earned $9,000 in gross wages. Her letter called the first six months probationary.

• In Manitoba she is past the qualifying service of 30 days, so the schedule applies whatever the letter said. Notice at her length of service is 1 week, which as pay in lieu is $900.00. Her vacation allowance is 4% of her wages, or $360.00. Statutory floor: $1,260.00, plus her unpaid wages.
• In New Brunswick she is below the qualifying service of 6 months, so no notice and no pay in lieu are owed. Her vacation pay is untouched: 4% of her wages, or $360.00, plus her unpaid wages, due on the deadline ESA s. 37 sets.

Same job, same contract, same probation clause, and the difference is which Act she works under. The wage and the dates are invented; every week and percentage comes from the section cited. Your own dates go into the tool on your jurisdiction's page.

What this does not decide

The statutory floor is not a view on whether ending the job was fair or lawful. Outside Quebec, a dismissed employee with a contract of employment may have common law rights that the statute does not describe, and short service does not automatically rule them out; this site publishes no amounts for that and no prediction about it. If you believe the real reason was a protected ground, such as a disability, a pregnancy or a complaint you made, that is human rights or reprisal territory and belongs with your provincial commission or an employment lawyer, not with a calculator. See common law notice versus statutory minimums.