Ontario severance and termination pay (2026): what you're owed when your job ends

When a job in Ontario ends, the Employment Standards Act, 2000 sets the floor, and the severance pay hub compares that floor with the other thirteen jurisdictions. You're owed written notice of termination or the pay that stands in for it, from 1 week to 8 weeks. Ontario is one of only two jurisdictions in the country that adds a separate statutory severance pay on top, once you reach 5 years with an employer big enough to owe it, capped at 26 weeks of regular wages. You're owed the vacation pay you earned but were never paid, at 4% or 6% of your wages. All of it is due by the later of 7 days after your last day and your next regular pay day.

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

Who the Act covers, and who is federally regulated instead

The ESA reaches you if your work is done in Ontario, or is done partly outside the province as a continuation of work done here (ESA s. 3). Where you live doesn't decide it, and neither does where the head office sits. The work does.

Two groups fall outside. The first is anyone whose employment relationship is under federal jurisdiction, plus embassy and consulate staff. If your employer is a bank, an airline, a railway, a telecom or broadcaster, an interprovincial trucking company or a Crown corporation, the Canada Labour Code applies instead of the ESA even though you work in Ontario, and every figure changes: those rules are on the federally regulated page. The second group is the list in s. 3(5): secondary-school students in a school-board work experience program, students on a college or university placement, holders of political, religious or judicial office, and people working under a court order.

Notice of termination: how many weeks you're owed

Notice comes in flat bands, and the Act puts a floor under it at 3 months of continuous employment:

"No employer shall terminate the employment of an employee who has been continuously employed for three months or more unless the employer, (a) has given to the employee written notice of termination in accordance with section 57 or 58 and the notice has expired; or (b) has complied with section 61." (ESA s. 54)

Source: Employment Standards Act, 2000, s. 57 — Employer notice period. Reviewed on September 6, 2026. Notice is owed once you have 3 months of continuous service.

What counts, and what doesn't

Only completed bands count. Part-years add nothing, so seven years and eleven months buys the same notice as seven years flat (ESA s. 57). Keep that separate from severance pay, which does count leftover months.

Your employer has three ways to satisfy the section: give written working notice and keep you on the payroll to the end of it, pay termination pay as a lump sum and end the job today, or mix the two (ESA s. 61). The lump sum has to equal what you'd have been paid over the notice it skipped, and never less than your regular wages for a regular work week. Your employer also has to keep up its benefit-plan contributions through the period it bought out.

If you do work the notice, s. 60 protects it: your wage rate can't be cut, no other term of employment can be changed, you're paid at least your regular wages each week, and your benefits are maintained to the end (ESA s. 60). A notice period served on a cut schedule at a cut rate isn't notice.

Who gets nothing

O. Reg. 288/01 lists the people the notice rules don't reach (O. Reg. 288/01 s. 2): wilful misconduct, disobedience or wilful neglect of duty that isn't trivial and wasn't condoned; employees on a temporary layoff; definite-term or specific-task contracts that simply run out; contracts that became impossible to perform or were frustrated; refusal of reasonable alternative work with the same employer or through a seniority system; construction employees; and jobs ended by a strike or lockout at the workplace.

Two of those have limits. The fixed-term exemption falls away if the job ends early, if the term or task runs past twelve months, or if the work carries on three months or more past the end of the term; and frustration caused by your own illness or injury doesn't take the entitlement away. "Wilful" is a high bar too: careless or poor work isn't wilful misconduct.

Temporary layoff, and the rule that changed in 2025

A layoff isn't a termination while it stays temporary, and the Act draws that line in weeks (ESA s. 56). It stops being temporary once it passes 13 weeks in any 20 consecutive weeks. It can run to 35 weeks in any 52 consecutive weeks if your employer keeps something going for you: substantial payments, benefit-plan contributions, supplementary unemployment benefits, or a recall date you agreed to or the Director approved.

Since November 27, 2025 there's a third route: a non-union employee and employer may agree to an extended layoff of up to 52 weeks in any 78 consecutive weeks, valid only if the Director approves it, and the agreement can't be withdrawn once made. Any page describing Ontario layoffs with only the old two rules is out of date. When a layoff does cross the line, the termination is backdated to the first day of the layoff, and your notice, your severance and your final-pay deadline all run from that earlier date.

Worked example: Priya's notice

Priya started at a distribution company on March 1, 2019 and her last day was May 1, 2026: seven completed years. Her regular work week paid $1,000. Seven years puts her in the seven-year band, 7 weeks of notice. She was walked out the same day with no working notice, so the whole entitlement is owed in money: 7 weeks × $1,000 = $7,000.00, plus benefit contributions for those weeks. Two weeks' written working notice, paid normally, would have left 5 weeks to pay out.

Severance pay: Ontario's second entitlement

This is the part people get wrong, and it's the part worth the most. Statutory severance pay isn't termination pay under another name. It's a separate amount, owed on top of notice or pay in lieu, and only Ontario and the federal jurisdiction have one (ESA s. 64).

You have to clear both halves of a two-part test. First, your employment relationship was severed after 5 years or more with that employer; all your time there counts, continuous or not, active or not. Second, either the employer's payroll is $2,500,000.00 or more, or the severance was caused by a permanent discontinuance of all or part of its business at an establishment and you're one of 50 employees or more severed within six months as a result.

Read "all or part" carefully: one plant or department closing inside a much larger company can trigger the second route, and the Act treats that location as an establishment in its own right.

How much, and the ceiling

The formula is your regular wages for a regular work week, multiplied by your completed years plus any leftover completed months divided by 12 (ESA s. 65). Partial years do count here. The result stops at 26 weeks of regular wages, and the Act sets no floor at all: the calculation starts at 5 years and runs from there.

Priya again: seven completed years and four leftover months, at $1,000 a week. Seven, plus four months divided by 12, times her $1,000 work week, comes to $7,333.33. That sits on top of her $7,000.00 of termination pay, so her statutory minimum before vacation pay is $14,333.33. Severance pay can be paid in instalments over as long as three years, but only if you agree or the Director approves, and the balance falls due at once if a payment is missed.

The severance exclusions are their own list, not the notice list (O. Reg. 288/01 s. 9): wilful misconduct, disobedience or wilful neglect of duty that isn't trivial and wasn't condoned; frustration or impossibility; refusal of reasonable alternative work; retirement on an actuarially unreduced pension that credits the service you would have earned; construction employees and on-site maintenance workers on buildings, roads, sewers and pipelines; and a shutdown the employer proves was caused by the economic consequences of a strike.

Whatever your figure comes to, it's a floor and not a forecast. A lawyer may be able to recover more under common law or your contract, and this site doesn't calculate that.

Group terminations: when a whole group goes at once

When 50 employees or more are terminated at one establishment in the same 4 weeks, a longer schedule replaces the individual one in s. 57 (ESA s. 58).

Source: O. Reg. 288/01, s. 3 — Notice, 50 or more employees. Reviewed on September 6, 2026. In a mass termination the group notice replaces the individual notice in section 57, and the clock does not start until the Director has received the employer's information form. The employer must also post the same information at the workplace on the first day of the notice period and give it to each affected employee. Group notice does not apply where the terminations are 10 per cent or less of the employees who have worked at that establishment for at least three months and are not caused by a permanent shutdown of part of the business.

Two details decide whether that helps you. The notice period doesn't start running until the Director has received the employer's information form, so an employer that files late hasn't started your clock, and an employer that pays instead of giving notice still has to file. The same information has to be posted at the workplace on the first day of the notice period and given to each affected employee.

There's also an escape hatch. Group notice doesn't apply where the terminations are 10 per cent or less of the employees who have worked at that establishment for at least three months and aren't caused by a permanent discontinuance of part of the business (O. Reg. 288/01 s. 3). A head count alone doesn't settle it: in a very large workplace, sixty people can go without the group rule ever engaging, and each of them falls back on individual notice. A mass termination is also the one situation in which you owe your employer notice before you quit, under s. 58(6), and the next section sets that out.

Notice you owe when you quit

In the ordinary case, none. The ESA sets no general notice period for an employee who quits, whatever your contract says about two weeks' notice. That's a contract question, not an employment standards one.

One exception lives in the mass-termination section. If you were given notice under s. 58, you can't quit before giving your employer written notice of at least one week if you've been employed less than two years, or two weeks if you've been employed two years or more (ESA s. 58). That duty disappears if the employer constructively dismissed you or broke a term of your contract. Outside a mass termination it doesn't exist.

Vacation pay on your final pay

Vacation pay survives everything. Quitting, being fired for cause, a fixed-term contract running out: none of it changes what you're owed for vacation you earned but were never paid (ESA s. 38).

Source: Employment Standards Act, 2000, s. 33 — Right to vacation. Reviewed on September 6, 2026. When the job ends, any vacation pay that has accrued and not been paid is owed to you, on the same deadline as your final wages: the later of seven days after the employment ends and what would have been your next pay day. Quitting, being fired for cause, or being on a fixed-term contract makes no difference to this.

The rate is 4% of the wages you earned in the period the vacation is given for, stepping up to 6% at the length of service in the table above (ESA s. 35.2). Vacation pay itself is left out of the base. Wages take in what your contract requires plus anything the Act requires your employer to pay, but not tips, discretionary gifts or bonuses, expenses, or employer contributions to a benefit plan.

Priya's employer paid out her vacation pay each year on her anniversary, so what's outstanding is the wages she earned since that last payout: $42,000. At seven years her rate is 6%, so 6% of $42,000 is $2,520.00, owed on the same deadline as her final wages.

Public holidays in your last weeks

Ontario calls them public holidays, and there are 9 (ESA s. 1). One that falls inside a working notice period is a working day like any other, and it's paid.

Source: Employment Standards Act, 2000, s. 1 — Definitions. Reviewed on September 6, 2026. The statute names 9 holidays.

Public holiday pay is worked out from what you actually earned, not from a standard day: the regular wages you earned plus the vacation pay payable to you in the four work weeks before the work week the holiday fell in, divided by 20 (ESA s. 24). Regular wages there leave out overtime pay, premium pay, public holiday pay, vacation pay, termination pay and severance pay.

There's no minimum length of service in Ontario. If the holiday falls on a day that would ordinarily be a working day for you and you're not on vacation, your employer has to give you the day off and pay it (ESA s. 26). You lose it only if, without reasonable cause, you fail to work your whole last scheduled shift before the holiday or your whole first scheduled shift after it.

When the final pay must arrive

One deadline covers everything, whether you quit or your employer ended the job:

"If an employee's employment ends, the employer shall pay any wages to which the employee is entitled to the employee not later than the later of, (a) seven days after the employment ends; and (b) the day that would have been the employee's next pay day." (ESA s. 11)

The Act treats every payment it requires as wages, so that one date covers your last regular wages and overtime, accrued unpaid vacation pay, public holiday pay for a substitute day you never took, termination pay and severance pay. On or before the same day your employer has to hand you a written statement of the gross termination pay and severance pay it's paying.

Severance and Employment Insurance

Money paid because the job ended, whether it's called severance, a package, pay in lieu of notice or a vacation payout, normally counts as earnings for Employment Insurance. It's allocated to the weeks after your last day at the rate of a normal working week, and benefits don't start until it runs out. Allocation delays the payments; it doesn't cut the total weeks you can draw.

Apply as soon as the job ends rather than waiting for the money to settle, because a late application can cost you weeks. The Ontario EI page has the regional table, the hours you need and an estimator, and severance pay and EI works through the allocation rule.

What the statutory minimum doesn't include

Everything above is the floor. Three things can sit above it, and none of them is calculated here.

• Common law reasonable notice. Courts award notice on facts a calculator can't see: your age, your job, your length of service, how hard a comparable job is to find. It's often well above the statutory minimum, and this site publishes no amounts for it.
• Your written contract. A contract can promise more than the ESA. A term promising less isn't enforceable, but a badly drafted termination clause can still cost you the common law entitlement.
• A collective agreement. If you're in a union, your agreement may set out severance, recall rights and a grievance route on its own timetable, and your steward is the first call.

One Ontario trap deserves its own line. Filing an employment standards claim for termination pay or severance pay closes the door on a wrongful dismissal lawsuit about the same termination, unless you withdraw the claim within two weeks of filing it (ESA s. 96). If there's any chance you want the common law figure, get advice before you file, not after.

How to file a claim

You file with the Ontario Ministry of Labour, Immigration, Training and Skills Development, on the Director's approved form; a claim on any other form counts as not filed. It's free. The deadline is 2 years: a complaint about a contravention that happened more than that long before the day you file is deemed not to have been filed (ESA s. 96). The form and the instructions are on the ministry's page for filing an employment standards claim.