Regular EI covers losing your job. Sickness benefits cover something different and, for many people, scarier: your job is still there, but your body or mind has taken you out of it. A surgery recovery, a workplace injury your employer can’t accommodate, cancer treatment, a mental health condition your clinician says requires time away — all of it lives here.
Who qualifies
The four tests, all from Service Canada:
- You are unable to work for medical reasons — illness, injury, or quarantine. Mental health conditions qualify on the same footing as physical ones.
- Your regular weekly earnings have dropped by more than 40% because of it.
- You have accumulated 600 insurable hours in the 52 weeks before the claim (or since your last claim, if shorter). Note this is a flat 600 — unlike regular benefits, it does not vary by region.
- You provide a medical certificate from a doctor, nurse practitioner, or other recognized medical professional confirming you cannot work and for how long.
There is a one-week waiting period before payments start, the same as regular EI, and benefits are taxable income.
While you’re on claim
You file reports every two weeks and tell Service Canada when you expect to return. If you recover gradually, you can work part-time while on claim: earnings reduce your benefit by 50 cents per dollar up to a threshold of 90% of your weekly earnings, which makes a phased return cheaper than people expect. If 26 weeks runs out and you still cannot work, that is the point where employer long-term disability insurance, provincial programs, or CPP disability enter the picture — CPP disability is specifically built for conditions that are not coming back.
Self-employed workers are the exception to note: you are only covered if you opted into EI special benefits at least 12 months before claiming. That opt-in has to happen before you need it, which is the whole design of insurance, but it surprises people every year.