Ontario sick leave and personal emergency leave guide

Ontario has banned the sick note twice. The first ban arrived in 2018 under personal emergency leave. It was repealed in January 2019, and for almost six years a note was fair game. Then the ban returned on 28 October 2024, and eight months later a 27-week leave for serious illness joined the cast. It is the most dramatic life any piece of HR paperwork has ever had.

Here’s the catch for anyone running a team: the law moved while plenty of policies stayed put. If yours still asks for a doctor’s note on day one, it’s running on 2019 software, and the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA) has had several updates since. This guide covers what sick leave in Ontario requires today: the 3 statutory days, the note rule, long-term illness leave and the look-alike leave everyone mixes it up with. It also covers when you can still ask for medical documentation, what compliance really involves and how to handle sick leave when half your team works from the couch. No jargon, no scare stories, just a policy that protects the business and treats people like adults.

Basic ESA sick leave entitlements in Ontario

How many sick days in Ontario? Three. The ESA sets the minimum standards for provincially regulated employers (our Ontario Employment Standards Act guide has the full picture), and it gives eligible employees 3 unpaid, job-protected sick days per calendar year. Say it out loud a few times, and the number gets smaller.

Who qualifies

• Full-time, part-time and temporary employees
• Employed for at least 2 consecutive weeks

How the days work

• They don’t have to be taken consecutively
• They cover personal illness, injury or a medical emergency, including pre-planned elective surgery that an illness or injury requires
• They don’t cover caring for a family member, which falls under the separate family responsibility leave

If 3 days feels stingy, blame history. In 2018, Ontario’s personal emergency leave handed out 10 days a year, the first 2 paid, and employers couldn’t ask for a note. Then the legislative changes under Bill 47 arrived, and since 1 January 2019 the ESA has carried three separate unpaid leaves instead: sick leave (3 days), family responsibility leave (3 days) and bereavement leave (2 days). Ten days became eight, two paid days became none, and “personal emergency” went back to being something that happens to printers.

Paid sick days in Ontario aren’t mandatory. The 3 ESA days are unpaid unless your employment contract or policy says otherwise, and our guide to managing leave without pay in Ontario covers the payroll side. One catch for generous employers: if your contract already gives paid sick days, a day taken for a reason that would also qualify as ESA sick leave counts as ESA sick leave too, so you don’t owe both.

The ban on sick notes for basic ESA sick days

Here’s the rule in one sentence. An Ontario employer can’t require a certificate from a qualified health practitioner as proof of the 3 ESA sick days, and that means a physician, registered nurse or psychologist. The ban took effect on 28 October 2024, and it covers all 3 days, including the Mondays and Fridays you were already side-eyeing.

What you can still ask for is “evidence reasonable in the circumstances.” That phrase does real work with one hard edge: the evidence can’t be a doctor’s note for any of the first 3 days. Think of a short written statement from the employee, sized to the length of the absence and any pattern you’ve actually noticed, which is a higher bar than a hunch about Fridays.

What about day four? There’s no secret trapdoor. The ESA doesn’t create an automatic or universal “day four” rule that makes a note mandatory. For absences that run past the 3 ESA days, you can ask for medical documentation that fits the situation.

Here’s the take that will annoy someone: the sick note was always more ritual than evidence. It proves a clinician saw the person. It doesn’t prove how sick they were, whether they should have been at work or what they picked up in the waiting room. Ontario has now banned it, repealed the ban and brought the ban back, which tells you the argument is real.

If tracking 3 statutory days and 27 weeks of start-and-stop leave sounds like a job for memory and good intentions, a demo will show you how Employment Hero tracks leave balances and accruals.

Long-term illness leave (27 weeks)

On 19 June 2025, Ontario employees became entitled to up to 27 weeks of unpaid, job-protected long-term illness leave in a 52-week period. It came in through the Working for Workers Six Act, 2024, and it’s built for everything 3 days can’t hold. Three days handles a cold. Twenty-seven weeks handles a crisis. The stretch in between is where your own policy has to earn its keep, and the practitioner who issues the certificate decides what counts as a serious medical condition.

Eligibility

• At least 13 consecutive weeks of service
• A certificate from a qualified health practitioner (a physician, registered nurse or psychologist)
• A certificate that states the employee has a serious medical condition and specifies how long they won’t be working

How the leave works

• The weeks don’t have to be consecutive, so employees with chronic or episodic conditions can take them as flare-ups happen within the 52-week period
• If the certificate covers fewer than 27 weeks, the leave is limited to that period, and a new certificate can extend it up to the 27-week cap
• If an employee takes part of a week, the employer may count it as a full week

Behind every certificate is someone going through something hard. The point of the leave is simple: the job is still there when they’re ready.

The 27 weeks lines up with federal Employment Insurance sickness benefits, which pay for up to 26 weeks after a one-week waiting period, so job protection and income support finish at about the same time.

Now a warning label for anyone who thinks week 28 is a cliff. The 27-week cap limits the ESA’s job protection, and the duty to accommodate under the Human Rights Code can keep going beyond it unless it would cause undue hardship.

Clarifying the difference: long-term vs. critical illness leave

Long-term illness leave is about you. Critical illness leave is about them. Mix them up, and you end up quoting the wrong number to someone in the worst week of their year. The first is for an employee’s own serious medical condition. The second is a caregiver leave for a critically ill family member.

Critical illness leave (ESA s. 49.4) is for caring for or supporting a family member whose life is at risk. It covers a family member’s illness, never the employee’s own, and it runs up to 37 weeks for a minor child or up to 17 weeks for an adult family member. Long-term illness leave (ESA s. 49.8) covers the employee’s own chronic or episodic serious medical condition for up to 27 weeks.

Ontario statutory medical leaves comparison

When can employers request medical documentation?

Don’t let the sick-note ban turn into a no-paperwork-ever policy. It covers the 3 basic days, and medical documentation still has legitimate jobs elsewhere. You can generally ask for it in these situations:

• Longer absences beyond the 3 ESA sick days
• WSIB claims
• Disability accommodation under the Human Rights Code
• Return-to-work planning, to assess whether an employee can safely perform essential duties and to identify restrictions

Paid sick plans are where policies tie themselves in knots, so read yours slowly. If your plan gives more than 3 days, the note ban covers the days that overlap ESA sick leave, and the plan’s own terms can still ask for documentation on the extra days. Insurer-run benefits such as short-term disability follow the insurer’s paperwork rules. Plans differ, and the details matter, so have counsel read yours before a manager improvises.

Curiosity isn’t a business need. Employers generally have no right to an employee’s diagnosis, underlying cause, symptoms, treatment or full medical history. What you need is functional: what can this person do, what do they need and for how long. A note that says “off work indefinitely” tells you nothing you can plan around, so it’s reasonable to ask for clarification on restrictions and return timing.

And yes, you pay for it. Under Ontario Human Rights Commission guidance, the accommodation provider (hello) is expected to bear the cost of medical documentation it requires for an accommodation. The guidance isn’t law in itself, though adjudicators find it persuasive, which is a polite way of saying don’t test it.

See how Employment Hero sets up custom leave types for sick days, long-term illness and whatever generous extras your policy adds.

Employer compliance, policies and penalties

The compliance part is mostly housekeeping, which is the best kind of compliance.

• Job protection. Basic ESA sick leave and long-term illness leave are job-protected. The ESA prohibits penalizing, discriminating against or taking reprisals against employees who use their leave rights or who refuse to provide an unlawful sick note.
• Policy updates. Remove blanket medical-note requirements for ESA sick days and make sure your policy reflects the 27-week long-term illness leave.
• Record keeping. Employers must keep clear records of leave usage, which also makes tracking the 27-week cap far easier.
• The ESA poster. It no longer needs a wall, since that requirement was repealed in 2019. Each employee does need a copy within 30 days of hire, and a printed or emailed copy both work.

Then consider going further than the statute. A policy that beats the minimums is a hiring tool and a retention tool, and our guide to drafting a comprehensive time-off policy walks through sick, personal and vacation days.

Penalties exist, and it’s worth knowing their shape rather than their legend. The Ministry of Labour can issue notices of contravention, and a missing poster carries a $250 penalty, for example. Prosecution can lead to fines of up to $100,000 for individuals, and corporations face up to $100,000 for a first conviction, $250,000 for a second and $500,000 for a third or later. The Human Rights Tribunal can order remedies separately, and employees can pursue wrongful dismissal claims. The stronger reason to fix your policy this week is smaller and kinder: an afternoon of edits spares a manager from demanding a signature they’re no longer allowed to demand.

Managing sick leave for remote workers

Remote work changed the stage, and the law came along unchanged. A sick day at home is still a sick day, and “you’re home anyway” is not a legal theory. Three habits keep remote leave fair.

• Equal access. An employee’s work location doesn’t change their entitlement. Statutory leave works the same whether someone sits in the office or at a kitchen table, and “you can work from bed” is not a sick-leave policy.
• A clear reporting route. Pick one channel for absence reports, tell people what to include (that they’re off and when they expect to return, not why) and make sure every manager uses it.
• Confidential by default. Group chat is where medical details go to become gossip. Keep medical information out of shared calendars and forwarded emails too; it belongs with the employee, the manager and HR.

A sick-leave policy people can read in 2 minutes

Strip out the plot twists and Ontario’s rule book is short. Three unpaid days with no note. Up to 27 weeks of job-protected leave for a serious medical condition, backed by a certificate. A separate caregiver leave when a family member is critically ill. Everything else is yours to write, and everything else is where people actually live. Put it in plain language, keep the medical details private and give the day-one sick note a gold watch.

Ready to watch approved leave flow straight into payroll?