Ontario termination and severance pay calculator

Notice and termination pay

Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA) s. 54 and s. 57: employees with 3 months or more of continuous employment are owed 1 week of notice for under 1 year, 2 weeks from 1 year, 3 from 3 years, and one more week for each further year up to 8 weeks from 8 years. If the employer does not give the notice, it must pay termination pay of the regular weekly wage for each week of notice (s. 61).

Mass termination

Section 58 and Ontario Regulation 288/01 s. 3: when 50 or more employees are terminated within 4 weeks, notice is 8 weeks (50 to 199 employees), 12 weeks (200 to 499) or 16 weeks (500 or more). The calculator uses these in place of the service-based weeks.

Severance pay

Sections 63 to 65: 5 or more years of employment, and either a payroll of $2,500,000 or more or 50 or more employees severed within 6 months by a permanent closure. The amount is the regular weekly wage times the years of service plus a twelfth for each extra month, up to 26 weeks. With termination pay instead of notice, the notice weeks count as service (s. 65(4)).

How time is counted

Completed months run from the start date. A month is complete on the same day of the next month, or on the last day of a shorter month. Near a threshold, check the exact count.

Exclusions

The checkboxes follow Ontario Regulation 288/01 s. 2 (notice and termination pay) and s. 9 (severance pay). They are short summaries, and the Regulation has conditions that the labels cannot show.

Not included

Common law reasonable notice, contract and collective agreement terms, vacation pay and other wages owed, tax on the payments, employees outside the ESA such as federally regulated workers, and every province other than Ontario.

Examples: notice pay vs severance pay in Ontario.