Severance & Termination Pay Calculator Canada

Statutory minimums are the legal floor set out in an employment standards statute (like Ontario's ESA) — the least an employer can legally pay. Common-law "reasonable notice" is what a court would award for wrongful dismissal if there's no valid termination clause limiting you to the statutory minimum, and it is typically much higher — often in the range of one month per year of service for longer-service, older, or more senior employees, subject to a duty to mitigate by looking for comparable work. This calculator only computes the statutory floor; it cannot estimate common-law notice.

Common-law notice depends on case-specific factors set out in the leading case Bardal v. Globe & Mail: the employee's age, the character of the employment (seniority, specialization), length of service, and the availability of similar employment given the employee's experience, training and qualifications. There is no fixed formula — two employees with identical years of service can receive very different awards. Any tool claiming to output a precise common-law number is presenting a guess as a legal conclusion. Speak with an employment lawyer, who can weigh your specific facts (most offer a free or low-cost initial consultation).

No. If an employer has just cause to terminate (a high legal bar — generally serious misconduct, not just poor performance) neither statutory notice/termination pay nor statutory severance pay is owed. Most terminations are NOT for cause, even when an employer alleges performance issues — "without cause" terminations are the norm this calculator assumes.

Continuous employment with the same employer (or a predecessor employer in many amalgamation/sale-of-business situations), including time on approved leaves in most jurisdictions. It is not the same as "years worked" if there was a genuine break in employment. Use decimals for partial years — 7 years and 9 months is entered as 7.75.

No — they are two separate, additive entitlements under the ESA. Termination pay (or working notice) applies to almost every dismissed employee with 3+ months of service. Statutory severance pay is a second, larger entitlement that ONLY applies once an employee has 5+ years of service AND the employer's payroll is $2,500,000+ (there's also an alternate mass-termination test this calculator doesn't model). Both can be owed on the same dismissal.

That's not a display error — it's the exact statutory schedule in section 56 of Alberta's Employment Standards Code. Unlike Ontario, BC, and the federal scheme (which add roughly one week per additional year), Alberta's bands jump non-uniformly: 1 week, 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 5 weeks, 6 weeks, then 8 weeks at 10+ years.

No. Unlike Ontario and the federal Canada Labour Code, neither BC's Employment Standards Act nor Alberta's Employment Standards Code has a separate statutory severance-pay obligation. The termination notice/pay schedule shown for BC and Alberta IS the complete statutory minimum for those employees.

Under Canada Labour Code s.235, an employee with 1+ year of continuous employment gets the GREATER of 2 days' wages per completed year of service, or a flat 5-day-wages minimum. Unlike Ontario, the Code sets no maximum cap on the total.