Severance pay calculator for Canada (2026): notice, termination pay and vacation pay in all 14 jurisdictions

When your job ends in Canada, the employment standards statute where you work sets a floor under what your employer owes you: written notice of termination or the pay that replaces it, a separate statutory severance pay in two jurisdictions only, the vacation pay you never got, holiday pay, and a deadline for the money. Fourteen statutes, fourteen sets of numbers, different words for the same things. The calculator applies the right one to your dates and your pay.

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

What the calculator needs

Five things. Your first and last day, because service drives every schedule. Your regular pay, as an hourly rate with your usual hours, a weekly amount or a salary. How the job ended: let go with no cause alleged, fired for alleged cause, you quit, a fixed-term contract ran out, or a layoff went past the limit. The working notice you actually worked. And your gross wages since the last vacation payout. Nothing you type leaves your browser.

Which statute applies

Employment standards are provincial and territorial, with one big exception. If your employer works in an industry Parliament regulates, the Canada Labour Code applies instead of your province's Act, wherever you work: shipping and navigation, interprovincial railways and ferries, air transportation, radio broadcasting, banks and Crown corporations, plus telecom, interprovincial trucking and cross-border pipelines under its general words (CLC s. 167). Everyone else falls under the province or territory where the work is done (ESA s. 3).

A collective agreement normally sits above the statute, and two provinces go further: in Nova Scotia the notice and general-holiday sections don't reach unionized employees at all (NS LSC Regs s. 2), and in New Brunswick they apply only where no agreement covers you (ESA s. 29). Managers keep notice and vacation almost everywhere, but Quebec puts senior managers outside the notice section (LSA s. 3).

The fourteen pages

Each has the calculator set to that statute, plus its own schedules and sources.

• Ontario: severance on top of notice, the only formula counting leftover months.
• British Columbia: the fastest final pay in Canada when your employer ends it.
• Alberta: a flat group notice to the Minister that adds nothing to yours.
• Quebec: the individual and collective indemnities don't stack: you get the greater (LSA s. 84.0.13).
• Manitoba: Orange Shirt Day is a general holiday, and group notice becomes your own.
• Saskatchewan: three weeks of vacation from year one, the highest floor in Canada.
• Nova Scotia: past ten years, no discharge without just cause at all (LSC s. 71).
• New Brunswick: a for-cause dismissal is invalid unless the reasons are in writing (ESA s. 30).
• Newfoundland and Labrador: one schedule, so an employee who quits owes what the employer would.
• Prince Edward Island: a brand-new Act, so older guides cite sections that are gone.
• Yukon: an eight-rung notice ladder, and real notice owed when you quit.
• Northwest Territories: notice after 90 days, and pay in lieu counting benefits.
• Nunavut: the only statute with no deadline for reporting unpaid wages (Nunavut LSA s. 53).
• Federally regulated workplaces: notice that starts higher and climbs, severance with no ceiling.

The four words people mix up

Most of the confusion is vocabulary, not arithmetic:

Notice of termination

Written warning that the job ends on a date. You keep working and being paid through it: working notice.

Termination pay, or pay in lieu of notice

The money version: give less notice than the schedule requires and your employer owes wages for the weeks it skipped. Some statutes call it compensation for length of service, others a compensatory indemnity.

Severance pay

A separate entitlement on top of notice, in two of the fourteen only: Ontario (ESA s. 64) and federally regulated workplaces (CLC s. 235).

Severance package

Your employer's document, not a legal amount, and usually with a release attached.

Common law notice

What a court awards outside Quebec when the contract doesn't validly limit you. Often well above the statute, and not worked out here.

The first three: termination pay vs severance pay. The last: common law notice vs statutory minimums.

Notice across Canada

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

Notice is never owed from day one, and the statutes don't even count the qualifying period in the same unit: Manitoba asks for 30 days, four count in days, Saskatchewan in weeks, and New Brunswick and Yukon both ask for 6 months, the longest wait in Canada. Below it, nothing is owed, which is why probation is a different question.

Above it, some schedules add a week per completed year while others sit still for years. At seven completed years Ontario, British Columbia, Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and federal workplaces all give 7 weeks, Nova Scotia 4 weeks and Newfoundland and Labrador 3 weeks. Same seven years, less than half the notice.

Every ladder has a top: twelve of the fourteen stop at eight weeks, New Brunswick at 4 weeks and Newfoundland and Labrador at 6 weeks, however long you stayed. At the other end, three consecutive months buys the full 2 weeks federally (CLC s. 230) while a Nova Scotia employee gets 1 week. Your employer can serve the notice, pay it out or mix the two (working notice vs pay in lieu), and a group schedule applies when many go at once (mass terminations).

Statutory severance: Ontario and federal

Ontario's severance pay is a second entitlement on a two-part test. First, 5 years or more with that employer, all of it counting, continuous or not. Second, either a payroll of $2,500,000.00 or more, or a permanent discontinuance of all or part of the business that severed you with 50 employees or more others inside six months (ESA s. 64). Miss both and you get notice alone. Where the test is met, the amount is your regular work week times completed years plus leftover months over twelve, capped at 26 weeks (ESA s. 65).

The federal severance pay works differently. It starts at 12 months of continuous employment and is the greater of 2 days of wages for each completed year and a floor of 5 days (CLC s. 235). Nothing caps it, and just cause is the only exclusion left in the section. In the other twelve there is no statutory severance pay at all, so notice is the whole of it.

What five years of service buys you

Five years is where two lines cross: the service Ontario asks for before its severance pay can arise, and where a third week of vacation arrives federally, in Ontario and six others. Notice then runs from 3 weeks to 6 weeks, the vacation percentage from 4% to 6%. Same at three years and ten.

Vacation pay on your final pay

The fourteen-jurisdiction table is on vacation pay when your job ends.

This is the piece people forget. The wages you earned since your last vacation payout still carry the percentage when the job ends, whether you quit, were let go or were fired for alleged cause. In Ontario it rides the same deadline as your final wages (ESA s. 38).

The floors are far apart. Saskatchewan starts everyone at 3 weeks and 5.77% from year one, the highest minimum in Canada. Newfoundland and Labrador waits longest for a third week, and Yukon never gets one. British Columbia and Quebec pay the percentage before you can take the time off: 4% starts building within days in British Columbia (BC ESA s. 58). Only federal jobs reach 8%: vacation pay when your job ends.

When the final pay has to arrive

The fourteen-jurisdiction table is on final pay deadlines by province.

The gap is wide: at one end the money is due within days of your last shift, at the other the statute allows a month. British Columbia is the only jurisdiction that gives your employer longer when you quit.

Two jurisdictions have no simple number. Quebec sets no general final-pay deadline beyond the indemnity being due when the employment ends (LSA s. 83), and Prince Edward Island counts in pay periods. Ontario's deadline is the later of two dates, so your next pay day can push it out (ESA s. 11). Every deadline and section: final pay deadlines.

Statutory holidays in your last weeks

A stat holiday in a working notice period is usually still yours, and several statutes pay out a substituted day you never took. Counts run from 6 in Nova Scotia to 11 in British Columbia and the three territories, and no two formulas are alike: holiday pay by province.

What the minimum does not include

Four things sit above this floor. Common law reasonable notice: outside Quebec a court can award well above the statute where your contract doesn't validly limit you, and a release usually gives that up. Your written contract, which can promise more and never less. A collective agreement, which in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick replaces the statutory notice rules. And the parts of your pay the statutes leave out: pay in lieu runs on your regular work week, overtime excluded, except in Newfoundland and Labrador (NL LSA s. 53). Two routes beat the minimum without a lawsuit: unjust dismissal federally (CLC s. 240) and, in Quebec, dismissal without good and sufficient cause (LSA s. 124).

Talk to an employment lawyer before signing a release, if the offer is close to the floor, or if the real reason looks like something other than the work. Sergio, the editor of this site, is not a lawyer, and the site doesn't say whether your dismissal was lawful.

Severance pay and Employment Insurance

Employment Insurance normally treats money paid because the job ended as earnings: severance, pay in lieu, unused vacation pay, a closing bonus. The rule spreads it over the weeks after your last day, so benefits don't start until it runs out (EI Regulations s. 36). That delays the start without cutting the weeks you can draw.

Apply as soon as the job ends rather than waiting for the money, because a late application can cost you weeks, and your employer has to issue a record of employment (ROE) before Service Canada can process your claim. The estimator is in the EI section, the allocation in severance pay and EI.

How the calculator does the math

Your dates give your service in completed years and months, and that picks the row of your notice schedule. The working notice you worked comes off those weeks, and what's left is the pay in lieu. Severance is added where it exists, on the two formulas above. Vacation pay is your percentage applied to the wages you earned since your last payout. Group notice is shown when your head count triggers it but never added to the total, because it replaces your individual notice in some jurisdictions and adds to it in others.

An example, with invented numbers: an Ontario employee, ten completed years, a $1,000 work week, $16,000 in wages since the last vacation payout. Notice has hit its ceiling at 8 weeks, so pay in lieu is $8,000.00. Severance, if the payroll test is met, keeps counting at a week a year: $10,000.00. Vacation pay at 6% is $960.00. Total minimum: $18,960.00. Past that, every extra year adds to the severance and nothing to the notice.

What it won't do is make the calls a person has to: whether an allegation of just cause meets the statutory standard, or whether a layoff has become a termination (temporary layoff rules). Every figure comes from the data file behind the tables, checked the way the methodology sets out.