Is Remembrance Day a statutory holiday?

Not under the Labour Standards Code. Its six general holidays are New Year's Day, Nova Scotia Heritage Day, Good Friday, Canada Day, Labour Day and Christmas Day, and the Code's pay formula reaches those six only. The Remembrance Day Act, R.S.N.S. 1989, c. 396, is what closes most retail on 11 November. Under it, an employee who works the day, was paid for fifteen of the previous thirty days, and is not in an exempt sector gets a paid day off later. The exemptions are wide: farming, fishing, aquaculture, Christmas tree operations, forestry, and industrial undertakings such as mines, factories, construction and call centres. For those employees 11 November is an ordinary working day at ordinary pay. No time and a half, and nothing for the employee who stays home.

No. The Employment Standards Act, 2000 lists nine public holidays and 11 November is not among them, along with the August civic holiday, Easter Monday and the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Ontario has no closing law for the day either. The Remembrance Day Observance Act, 1997 asks for two minutes of silence and nothing more. An Ontario employer that gives the day off is doing it by policy or contract, and the policy sets the pay.

Yes. It is one of British Columbia's eleven statutory holidays. Under s. 44 of the Employment Standards Act you qualify if you have been employed for at least 30 calendar days before the day and have either worked or earned wages on 15 of the 30 calendar days before it, or worked under an averaging agreement under s. 37 at any time in that 30-day period. If you are given the day off, you are paid an average day's pay (s. 45). If you work it, you are paid 1½ times your regular wage for the first 12 hours and double after that, plus the average day's pay (s. 46).

Yes. It is one of Alberta's nine general holidays (Employment Standards Code s. 25(h)), but whether you are paid depends on your service and your schedule. You are eligible if you have worked for the same employer for 30 work days or more in the 12 months before it (s. 26(1)), and you lose the pay if you are absent without the employer's consent on your last regular work day before the holiday or your first regular work day after it (s. 26(2)). In 2026 it falls on a Wednesday. If Wednesday is normally a work day for you and you are off, you are paid your average daily wage (s. 28). If you work it, you get that plus 1½ times your wage rate for each hour, or regular wages plus a paid day off later (s. 29). If Wednesday is not normally a work day for you, working it pays 1½ times your rate (s. 30) and staying home earns no holiday pay. On an irregular schedule, Wednesday counts as a normal work day if you worked Wednesdays in at least 5 of the 9 weeks before the week of the holiday (s. 27(2)).

Only if you work it. Remembrance Day is not one of the nine general holidays in the Employment Standards Code. The Remembrance Day Act, C.C.S.M. c. R80, bars most retailers from admitting the public between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., and s. 3.4 pays an employee required to work the day the holiday pay that would have been owed had it been a general holiday, plus the overtime wage rate for the hours actually worked or for half a normal day's hours, whichever is more. An employee who is off that day is owed nothing.

Yes. Those industries are federally regulated, and s. 166 of the Canada Labour Code lists Remembrance Day among its ten general holidays, so the province you work in does not decide it. A qualifying employee is paid under s. 196(1): one twentieth of the wages, overtime excluded, earned in the four weeks before the week of the holiday. A bank teller in Toronto gets the day, the shop assistant next door does not.