EI Sickness Benefits: Eligibility, Amount, and Working While Sick

EI sickness benefits replace part of your income when illness, injury or quarantine keeps you from working. You don’t need to have lost your job. This page covers who qualifies, how much you get, returning to work gradually, and what to do when the benefits end.

At a glance

Source: Service Canada, EI sickness benefits.

Who qualifies

• You're unable to work for medical reasons: illness, injury, quarantine or another medical condition.
• Your regular weekly earnings have dropped by more than 40% for at least one week.
• You have 600 insured hours in the 52 weeks before your claim, or since your last claim started if that's shorter.
• You'd be available for work if it weren't for your medical condition.

Source: Service Canada, EI sickness: do you qualify.

The medical certificate can be signed by a medical doctor, nurse practitioner, psychologist, chiropractor, dentist, optometrist, podiatrist or midwife, by a registered nurse in isolated areas without a doctor, or by a public health authority for quarantine. If you aren’t asked to send it with your application, keep it for 6 years.

How much you get

The average uses your best weeks of earnings, as for regular benefits, and the family supplement can raise it for low-income families. For claims that start in 2027 the maximum is $749. The EI calculator estimates your amount.

The weeks can be taken together or in separate periods within your benefit period. You stop receiving them when you’re able to go back to work.

Employer sick leave and disability plans

Check with your employer first. Paid sick leave and short-term disability plans usually pay before EI, and payments from a group wage-loss plan count as earnings that reduce EI. When an employer plan ends before you’ve recovered, EI sickness benefits can pay for any weeks left.

Working part-time while you recover

Since August 12, 2018, the Working While on Claim rules apply to sickness benefits. If your doctor clears you for reduced hours or modified duties, you can work and keep part of your EI:

• You keep 50 cents of EI for every dollar you earn, up to 90% of the weekly insurable earnings your benefit is based on (the "previous weekly earnings" on your benefit statement).
• Earnings above that 90% cap are deducted from your EI dollar for dollar.

You must still be unable to do your usual job full time; once you can, stop claiming.

Example. Your benefit is based on $1,000 a week, so you get $550. In a gradual return you earn $400 in a week: $200 is deducted, you receive $350 of EI, and $750 in total.

Report all earnings on your reports every 2 weeks. The working while on EI page has the full rules.

Returning gradually. A graduated return to work is usually a plan agreed by you, your doctor and your employer that adds hours over several weeks. Under human rights law, employers must accommodate a medical condition up to the point of undue hardship; if accommodation is refused, you can contact your provincial human rights commission (or the Canadian Human Rights Commission for federally regulated employers), your union or an employment lawyer.

Combining with other EI benefits

You can receive sickness benefits along with regular, maternity, parental or caregiving benefits in the same benefit period, as long as you qualify for each. When regular and special benefits are combined, the usual limit is 50 weeks in one benefit period. If you get sick while on regular benefits, tell Service Canada; you may be switched to sickness benefits.

When sickness benefits end

If you still can’t work after 26 weeks:

• Long-term disability insurance, if you have it through work or on your own, usually starts after a waiting period.
• CPP disability benefits are for a severe and prolonged disability; see CPP disability.
• Provincial disability or income assistance programs are the fallback.

How to apply

1. Get a medical certificate (or confirm your practitioner will provide one).
2. Apply online as soon as you stop working; applying more than 4 weeks after your last day of work can cost you benefits. See how to apply for EI.
3. Report every 2 weeks.

Related pages

• How EI works
• EI caregiving benefits
• Maternity and parental benefits
• EI calculator