Paid Sick Days in Quebec: What the Law Requires

You wake up sick on a Tuesday morning. Does your employer have to pay you for that day? In Quebec, the answer comes down to one short rule that is widely misunderstood: the Act respecting labour standards guarantees two paid days a year, and only after three months of service. Here is what those days actually cover, and what they are worth once the deductions are taken off.

Two paid days a year, after three months of service

The Act respecting labour standards is a floor: the minimum an employer has to offer, whatever its in-house policy says. For absences due to illness, that floor fits in one sentence.

An employee with at least three months of uninterrupted service with the same employer is entitled to two paid days of absence per year. "Uninterrupted service" simply means you have been on the payroll without a break for three months — part-time counts.

Two details almost everyone misses:

• These are two days per calendar year, not two days per illness.
• Those two days are not reserved for your own illness. They come out of the whole set of absences the law protects, including absences for family obligations.

Anything beyond those two days is still protected — your employer cannot fire you for being sick — but it is unpaid, unless your employment contract, your collective agreement or your employer's policy provides something better.

Illness or family obligations: the law does not count them the same way

Many people believe they have "two sick days" on one side and "ten family days" on the other. That is not how the law is built.

Read the table in two steps. The middle column is the right to be away without losing your job. The right-hand column is the right to be paid. The two overlap on two days only — and those two days are shared across both rows.

What that means in practice: if you used your two paid days in February to take a child to the doctor, they are no longer available in November when you catch the flu. Your right to be absent, on the other hand, is untouched.

A paid day is salary like any other

A paid sick day is neither a bonus nor a separate allowance. It is salary. It shows up on your pay stub like any day worked, and it goes through exactly the same deductions.

In Quebec there are three of those, on top of the two income taxes:

• The Quebec Pension Plan (QPP), the public retirement plan. Contributing is compulsory as soon as your work income goes above $3,500 a year. It is the Quebec version of the Canada Pension Plan: an employer whose province of employment is Quebec withholds QPP instead of CPP.
• Employment Insurance, which funds the benefits paid when you lose your job — or when you are sick for too long. In Quebec, employees contribute at 1.30% in 2026, on a maximum of $68,900 of insurable earnings.
• The Quebec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP), which funds maternity, paternity and parental leave.

The gross amount of the day itself is set from your pay over the preceding weeks. The law works that way so an employee on a variable schedule is not penalised by one slow week. For someone on a steady annual salary, it comes to one normal day of pay.

What actually lands in your account

Take an annual salary of $60,000 — a round number, chosen to illustrate, not an average. Here is how it breaks down over a full year:

The average deduction rate works out to about 24%. Over 260 paid days in the year, one day is therefore worth roughly $231 gross, of which about $175 is left once the deductions are taken off. Two paid days come to something like $350 net.

One distinction worth making. That 24% is the average rate: the share of your total salary that goes to taxes and contributions. The marginal rate is the rate that hits the next dollar you earn; it sits closer to 36% at this salary level, because the federal tax brackets and the Quebec ones climb in steps. Which one applies to a sick day? The average rate: for an employee on an annual salary, that day is not added to your income — it is already part of it.

Federally regulated? It is ten paid days instead

A minority of workers in Canada fall not under their province's labour standards but under the Canada Labour Code: banks, telecommunications, interprovincial transport — trucking, rail, air. If that is your case, Quebec's two-day rule does not apply to you, and you are considerably better served.

The federal regime provides up to 10 days of medical leave with pay per year. Those days accumulate rather than being granted all at once: after an initial qualifying period of 30 days of continuous employment, you get 3 days, then 1 more day at the start of each month, up to the maximum of 10.

How do you know which regime you fall under? Your employer's industry decides it — not your own occupation, and not the province you live in.

When illness drags on: Employment Insurance takes over

Two paid days cover neither surgery nor burnout. For long absences, the safety net is no longer the employer: it is Employment Insurance, the very plan you fund on every paycheque.

Sickness benefits pay 55% of your insurable earnings, up to a maximum of $729 a week in 2026, for a maximum of 26 weeks. That weekly ceiling is reached as soon as you earn $68,900 a year: above that, benefits stop rising, because contributions stop rising too.

The calculation follows the same mechanics as regular benefits, which we covered in our article on how EI benefits are calculated in Quebec.

What to check in your own case

• Your collective agreement or employment contract. The law sets a floor, never a ceiling. Many employers offer a more generous bank of sick days; that is what applies then.
• Your pay stub. A paid sick day has to appear on it as salary, with the usual deductions. If it is missing, ask.
• Your length of service. Below three months of uninterrupted service, the right to the two paid days is not open yet — the right to be absent is.
• Your net amount. To know what a day is really worth in your situation, the Quebec net salary calculator runs the numbers from your own gross.