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Remembrance Day, 11 November 2026, is a paid statutory holiday in nine of Canada's thirteen provinces and territories. It is not one in Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba or Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia is the one that catches people out: most shops are shut on the day, but that comes from the Remembrance Day Act, not the Labour Standards Code, and the Code's holiday-pay formula does not reach it.
A statutory holiday in 9 of 13 provinces and territories.
Last reviewed · maintained by Ihor Bezrukavnyk · how we calculate
| Jurisdiction | Statutory holiday | |
|---|---|---|
| AlbertaRemembrance Daypay formula → | Yes | Remembrance Day |
| British ColumbiaRemembrance Daypay formula → | Yes | Remembrance Day |
| Manitoba—pay formula → | No | — |
| New BrunswickRemembrance Daypay formula → | Yes | Remembrance Day |
| Newfoundland and LabradorRemembrance Daypay formula → | Yes | Remembrance Day |
| Northwest TerritoriesRemembrance Daypay formula → | Yes | Remembrance Day |
| Nova Scotia—Not a holiday under the Labour Standards Code, but the Remembrance Day Act closes most retail and business, and the Code's holiday-pay formula does not govern the day.pay formula → | No | —Not a holiday under the Labour Standards Code, but the Remembrance Day Act closes most retail and business, and the Code's holiday-pay formula does not govern the day. |
| NunavutRemembrance Daypay formula → | Yes | Remembrance Day |
| Ontario—pay formula → | No | — |
| Prince Edward IslandRemembrance Daypay formula → | Yes | Remembrance Day |
| Quebec—pay formula → | No | — |
| SaskatchewanRemembrance Daypay formula → | Yes | Remembrance Day |
| YukonRemembrance Daypay formula → | Yes | Remembrance Day |
Section 3 of the federal Holidays Act makes 11 November a legal holiday to be kept and observed throughout Canada. That phrase is why so many people expect the day to be paid everywhere. The Holidays Act names the day and stops there; it creates no entitlement to pay or to time off. What the day is worth to an hourly worker comes from employment standards law, and for most workers that means provincial law. Each legislature writes its own closed list of holidays, and four of them left this one off.
Nova Scotia and Manitoba did not ignore the day, they legislated it somewhere else. Nova Scotia's Remembrance Day Act, R.S.N.S. 1989, c. 396, closes most retail and business on 11 November; Manitoba's Remembrance Day Act bars most retailers from admitting the public between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Both are closing laws sitting outside the employment standards statute, and a shut shop is not a paid holiday. Ontario and Quebec have neither: their lists run to nine days and eight, and 11 November is on neither.
In the nine jurisdictions where it is statutory, a qualifying employee who has the day off is paid for it, and one who works it is owed more than plain wages, most often holiday pay plus time and a half. Several jurisdictions let an employer give a paid day off later instead of part of that. What the day pays is not one national figure, and the table on this page links each jurisdiction to its own formula.
Where the day is not statutory, what you are paid for it comes from your contract, your employer's policy or your collective agreement, and plenty of Ontario employers do give it off. Manitoba and Nova Scotia are a different case again: each has a Remembrance Day Act, and those Acts pay only the employee who actually works the day. Someone who stays home is owed nothing for it.
Questions people actually ask
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.
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.
Overtally computes what you should be paid before taxes. It does not calculate take-home pay, withholding or deductions, and it is not legal advice — it is your own record and your own estimate.