Maximum hours of work in Ontario

Forty-eight, unless you have signed an agreement to work more. The agreement has to be in writing, has to name a specific number of hours, and is invalid unless your employer first gave you the Director's information document on hours of work and overtime and the agreement records that you got it. Since April 2019 no approval from the Director is needed, and the Act sets no ceiling above forty-eight other than the number in your own agreement.

No. Overtime in Ontario starts at forty-four hours in a work week. Forty-eight is the maximum number of hours you can be required to work, which is a different question with a different answer. Hours forty-five to forty-eight are lawful without any agreement and are still paid at time and a half.

Only if you agreed in writing to a specific higher number, or if your employer has established a regular work day longer than eight hours — someone scheduled on twelve-hour shifts has a twelve-hour daily limit, not an eight-hour one. Outside those cases, the employer may not require or even permit the extra hours.

An agreement has to be genuine, and you can revoke it by giving two weeks' written notice. What no agreement can do is take away overtime pay: the Act does not allow contracting out of an employment standard, so hours above forty-four are paid at time and a half whatever the agreement says about the hours themselves.

Yes — at least thirty minutes, arranged so that you never work more than five hours in a row without one. You and your employer can agree to split it into two breaks adding up to thirty minutes within the same five hours. The break is unpaid only if you do no work during it; if you work through it, the time is paid and counts toward your hours.

Eleven consecutive hours free from work in each rolling twenty-four-hour day, and at least eight hours between successive shifts unless the two together come to no more than thirteen hours or you agreed electronically or in writing to less. The eleven-hour rule gives way only when you are on call and called in outside your expected hours. On top of that you are entitled to twenty-four consecutive hours off each work week, or forty-eight consecutive hours off in every two consecutive work weeks.

The Act does not say. Ontario's Employment Standards Act sets no number of hours that makes a job full-time, and every hours rule on this page applies whether the job is called full-time, part-time or casual. The only official figure is a statistical one: Statistics Canada counts thirty hours or more a week at your main job as full-time in its Labour Force Survey. Employers draw their own line for benefits, and that line is a matter of contract, not of the Act.

For Statistics Canada it is — the Labour Force Survey counts thirty hours or more a week at the main job as full-time — but the Act attaches nothing to that number. At thirty hours you are as far under the forty-eight-hour ceiling as anyone, and overtime starts at forty-four for you as for everyone else. Whether thirty hours earns benefits depends on your employer's policy or collective agreement.

No separate one. A part-time employee is under the same section 17 limits as everyone else: eight hours in a day or the established regular work day, forty-eight in a work week, and more only by written agreement. There is no lower ceiling for part-time hours, and nothing stops a part-time job from crossing forty-four hours in a busy week — if it does, the hours past forty-four are overtime.

The Act guarantees eating periods, not coffee breaks: at least thirty minutes free from work, timed so that you never work more than five hours in a row without one. An eight-hour shift needs one; a ten- or twelve-hour shift needs two, because a single break cannot keep every stretch under five hours. Anything shorter or more frequent comes from the employer's policy or your contract, not from the statute.

You can be scheduled for it. But if you regularly work more than three hours a day and are sent home before three hours despite being available to stay, you are owed three hours' pay under the three-hour rule. The rule does not reach employees whose regular shift is three hours or less, or a stoppage caused by fire, lightning, power failure, a storm or a similar cause beyond the employer's control.

The Act does not count days. It requires twenty-four consecutive hours free from work in every work week, or forty-eight consecutive hours in every two consecutive work weeks — which, taken at its widest, allows a run of about twelve days before the forty-eight hours fall due. The daily and weekly hour limits still apply across that run, and overtime is owed past forty-four hours in each work week.

Only in narrow cases. The daily limit is eight hours or your established regular work day, and a written agreement can raise it — but section 18 still requires eleven consecutive hours free from work in each day, which caps a day at thirteen hours of work. A sixteen-hour shift is lawful only under the on-call exception, or in the exceptional circumstances of section 19: an emergency, urgent repairs, or an unforeseen event that threatens essential services or continuous operations. Being short-staffed is not one of them.