Sick days in Canada by province, from Ontario’s 3 unpaid days to BC’s paid leave

Sick leave in Canada is set by the employment standards law that covers the employee, and for most private employers that means the statute of the province in which the job is done. There is no single national entitlement. An employee in Toronto, a colleague in Vancouver and another in Montréal can each have different rules on how many days they get, how many are paid and when the right begins.

The Canada Labour Code sets its own sick-leave rules, and those apply only to federally regulated employers. The federal figure of 10 paid days is often quoted as if it covered every Canadian worker. For a foreign company hiring a salesperson or engineer through a provincially regulated employer, it does not.

Two other systems sit alongside the employment standards minimums. Employment Insurance (EI) sickness benefits, run by Service Canada, can replace part of a person’s income during a longer illness. Any sick pay you offer in your own policy sits on top of both. Getting the order right matters for budgeting: the statute fixes what you must allow, EI covers some longer absences, and your policy fills whatever gap you choose to fill.

The sections below take the provinces in turn, starting with Ontario as the default, then British Columbia, Quebec and Alberta, followed by the federal sector and the EI side.

Remote staff need one extra step. For payroll withholding, the CRA ties a home-based employee to a “province of employment” by reference to the employer establishment they report to, or otherwise the establishment with which they have a reasonable attachment. Leave rules follow employment standards law, which is a separate question, so confirm which province’s standards cover a remote hire before the contract is issued and write that province into it.

Ontario employees get 3 days of unpaid, job-protected sick leave a year once they have been employed for 2 consecutive weeks. The days are unpaid under the Employment Standards Act (ESA), so any pay for them comes from the employer’s own policy. Since 28 October 2024, employers may not require a medical note for this leave, according to the province’s sick leave guide.

Longer illness has its own protection. Ontario’s long-term illness leave, in force since 19 June 2025, allows as much as 27 weeks of job-protected leave, unpaid, within a 52-week period to employees with at least 13 weeks of service. Pay during that time typically comes from EI sickness benefits or any disability cover you provide.

The ESA also lists family medical leave, critical illness leave and family responsibility leave. These cover caring for relatives and are separate from the employee’s own sick days. Check each page of the ESA guide for its current length and eligibility before writing them into a handbook.

For a policy, the Ontario minimum translates into a short checklist:

• Allow at least 3 sick days a year after the first 2 weeks, with the job protected.
• Decide whether you will pay for those days, and write the answer down.
• Remove any rule that demands a doctor’s note for the 3 ESA days.
• Explain how long-term illness leave works once 13 weeks of service are reached.

British Columbia requires 5 paid sick days and 3 unpaid sick days a year once an employee has worked for 90 days. That puts a direct sick-leave cost into every BC budget from the fourth month of employment. The rules are set out in the BC government’s leaves of absence guide.

A budgeting example gives a sense of scale. Assumptions: a BC employee on a salary of CAD 85,000 a year, 260 working days in the year, and each paid sick day valued at a straight 1/260 of salary. On those assumptions one day is worth about CAD 326.92, and all 5 paid days together come to about CAD 1,634.62 if every day is used. The statutory method for calculating a day’s pay may give a slightly different figure, so treat this as a planning number only.

Salaried staff in BC often see no change in their pay slip for a sick day, because salary simply continues. The cost is still real, since the work is not being done, and it matters more in small teams where cover is hard to arrange.

BC also has 11 statutory holidays, against Ontario’s 9 ESA holidays, so a BC hire carries more paid non-working days overall. Include both when you compare the cost of the same role in different provinces.

The 3 unpaid days in BC work like Ontario’s: the job is protected, but pay depends on your own policy. If you already pay for sick days in other countries, extending that to the 3 unpaid BC days is a simple way to keep one rule for the whole team.

Quebec and Alberta each set their own sick-leave rules, and both need checking with the provincial authority before a policy is finalised. In Quebec, sickness and family leave are part of the province’s labour standards law (Loi sur les normes du travail), which the CNESST enforces. Confirm the current number of days, and how many are paid, directly with the CNESST.

Quebec also changes the benefits picture around leave. Maternity and parental benefits for Quebec parents come from QPIP, the provincial parental insurance plan (RQAP in French), in place of EI. Because QPIP carries that cost, the 2026 EI premium in Quebec is lower: employees pay CAD 1.30 and employers CAD 1.82 for every CAD 100 of insurable earnings, against 1.63% and 2.282% elsewhere. EI sickness benefits still come from the federal system.

In Alberta, employment standards are administered by Alberta Employment Standards. Check its current guidance on sick and personal leave before you promise anything in an offer letter, and record the source and date in your handbook so the next review knows what the policy was built on.

For both provinces, the safest approach for a foreign employer is to write the province into the policy itself. A single Canada-wide sick policy that quotes Ontario’s 3 unpaid days will be wrong for someone in BC and may be wrong for someone in Quebec.

Employees of federally regulated employers get up to 10 days of paid medical leave a year once they have completed 30 days of service. The entitlement comes from the Canada Labour Code and is described on the federal labour standards leave page.

This is the figure that circulates most widely, and it is the one most often misapplied. It covers only federally regulated employers and their staff. Most private employers fall under provincial statutes, so a typical foreign company hiring in Ontario, BC, Alberta or Quebec follows the provincial rules above.

If you are unsure which regime covers your business, settle it before you write the leave policy. The answer drives much more than sick leave: the federal regime also has its own minimum wage (CAD 18.15 an hour from 1 April 2026), its own 10 public holidays and its own termination rules.

EI sickness benefits pick up where short sick leave ends, replacing part of an eligible person’s income while they cannot work because of illness or injury. They are paid by Service Canada from the EI fund. Service Canada sets the maximum number of weeks, so check the current figure there before quoting it in a handbook.

Employers help fund the system through EI premiums. For 2026, premiums are charged on the first CAD 68,900 of insurable earnings, at 1.63% on the employee’s side and 2.282% on the employer’s, so the most a single employee’s premiums can reach in the year is CAD 1,123.07 on their side and CAD 1,572.30 on yours. The full picture of CPP and EI costs is covered in CPP and EI contributions for employers.

Paperwork is the employer’s main job during a longer absence. When an illness leads to an interruption of earnings, the employer issues a Record of Employment (ROE) through ROE Web, normally inside 5 calendar days. A delayed ROE delays the employee’s claim, which is an avoidable strain on someone who is already unwell.

If you offer your own sick pay or disability cover, decide how it interacts with EI before anyone needs it. You can top up EI, or pay full salary for a set period instead. Either way, the policy should say which comes first and for how long.

Start from the statutory minimum in each province where you employ people, then decide how far above it you want to go. The minimums differ enough that a policy built for one province will usually be wrong in another, so the policy should name the province, the entitlement and the source.

• Record the province of employment for every hire, since it decides which rules apply.
• State the statutory days, the paid days and the qualifying period for each province.
• Say whether you pay for statutory unpaid days, and on what basis.
• Set out how long-term absence, EI sickness benefits and any disability cover fit together.
• Note the date the policy was checked, so the next review knows what has changed.

Track sick days per employee and per leave year in the payroll system, not in a manager’s spreadsheet. Separate records for the statutory days, any extra paid days you grant and long-term absences make it easier to answer an employee’s question, or an employment standards officer’s, with dates and figures.

Keep the offer letter consistent with the policy. The sick-leave line in an employment contract is one of the items covered in employment contract essentials, and the contract wording should never promise less than the provincial minimum.

When you hire via Employer of Record Canada, we are your hire’s legal employer (employer of record), and we apply the provincial sick-leave rules on our payroll, including issuing the ROE when an absence interrupts earnings. You decide whether to offer more than the minimum, and we build that into the contract. How that split of roles works is explained in the employer of record explainer, and the main provincial rules are summarised on employing in Canada.