Being let go while you are still hurt is a particular kind of shock. You did what you were told to do. You reported the injury, you filed the claim, you went to the appointments. Then the call came, or the letter, or the quiet conversation at the end of a shift. The first thing most people want to know is whether that was even allowed.
Yes, you can be dismissed while a workers compensation claim is open. You cannot be dismissed because of it. What protects you is not one law but two, a re-employment duty in your workers compensation statute and a duty to accommodate disability under your human rights code, and the two do not line up. In four jurisdictions in Canada only one of them reaches you at all.
Most of what you will find online about this is written about Ontario. Ontario has a detailed scheme, it is the one lawyers write up, and it does not travel. Alberta has no such duty at all. Manitoba sets a bar Ontario does not have. Quebec has no size threshold whatsoever. Below is what actually applies where you work.
Can your employer fire you while your claim is open?
They can end your employment for a reason that has nothing to do with your injury. A plant closes. A contract ends. A role is genuinely eliminated. None of that becomes unlawful because you happen to have an open claim.
What they cannot do is dismiss you because you were hurt, because you were off, because you needed treatment or because you claimed. The difficulty is almost never the law. It is proof. Employers rarely put the real reason in writing, so what decides these cases is the record: dates, who said what, how your duties changed after the injury, how close the dismissal sits to a medical note or a return-to-work meeting.
That is why the timeline matters more than anything else you hold. If you have been keeping a daily record of symptoms, appointments, calls and costs, you already have the thing that decides this. If you have not, start today and write down everything you can still remember, with dates.
Does your employer have to give you your job back?
In some places, yes, and the board can fine them for refusing. In others there is no such duty at all and your only route is a human rights complaint.
Where the duty exists it usually works the same way. Once you are medically able, the employer must offer your old job or something comparable. If you cannot do your old job but can do something else, they must offer you the first suitable work that comes up. They must accommodate you short of undue hardship. The duty runs for a fixed period and then stops.
Two details decide whether it reaches you at all. How many people your employer has and how long you had been there before you got hurt.
What does the law say in your province or territory?
| Where you work | Must the employer take you back | Who it binds | Human rights deadline | If you are punished for claiming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| British Columbia | Yes, s. 154.3 | 20 or more workers, 12 months service | 1 year | Tell WorkSafeBC. It enforces. No deadline of your own. |
| Alberta | No. No duty in the Act | Nobody | 1 year, no exceptions | No route through WCB. Alberta Human Rights Commission, one year. |
| Saskatchewan | No. Co-operation duty only | Nobody | 1 year | Employment Standards. It can order your job and lost pay back. |
| Manitoba | Yes, s. 49.3 | 25 or more workers, 12 months service | 1 year | Tell the WCB. It enforces. No deadline of your own. |
| Ontario | Yes, s. 41 | 20 or more workers, 1 year service | 1 year | WSIB on your job. Ministry of Labour on the reprisal itself. |
| Quebec | Yes, art. 236 LATMP | Every employer, no size limit | 3 years, refusable after 2. Treat as 2 | You file. CNESST, in writing, within thirty days. |
| New Brunswick | Yes, WorkSafeNB policy | 12 months service | 1 year | Tell WorkSafeNB. It enforces. No deadline of your own. |
| Nova Scotia | Yes, s. 90 | 12 months service, s. 90(b) | 12 months | Not the WCB. Department of Labour, under the safety Act. |
| Prince Edward Island | Yes, ss. 86 to 86.12 | 20 or more workers, 12 continuous months service | 1 year, no exceptions | WCB on your job. PEI Human Rights Commission on dismissal. |
| Newfoundland and Labrador | Yes, WorkplaceNL Policy 39.00 | 20 or more workers, 1 year service | 1 year, no exceptions | WorkplaceNL on your job. Human Rights Commission on dismissal. |
| Yukon | Yes, board policy 4.6 | 20 or more workers, 1 year service | 18 months | Tell the WSCB if you were pressured. Human rights if fired. |
| Northwest Territories | No. No duty in the Act | Nobody | 2 years | No route through WSCC. NWT Human Rights Commission. |
| Nunavut | No. No duty in the Act | Nobody | 2 years | No route through WSCC. Nunavut Human Rights Tribunal. |
Every row here was read against the statute itself, not against a national comparison table. That matters most in Prince Edward Island, where the duty sits at sections 86 to 86.12 and is easy to miss, and a great many pages report that the province has none. Where a row says no duty, we checked the current Act and every amending bill before saying so.
One door or two, you still have a route
If your row says there is no duty to re-employ, that is not the end of the road. It means you have one route rather than two. Disability is a protected ground in every jurisdiction in Canada, your employer must accommodate you short of undue hardship, and a human rights complaint costs nothing to file.
Being let go while you are still healing can feel like the moment everything stopped being in your hands. It is not. The two things that decide these cases are the record and the dates, and both of those are still yours to hold.
What happens if your employer has no duty to re-employ you?
Then everything rests on human rights law, and disability is a protected ground in all thirteen jurisdictions. Your employer must accommodate you to the point of undue hardship whether or not the compensation statute says so.
That matters most where the compensation statute is silent. In Alberta, Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut there is no re-employment duty on the compensation side, so human rights law is the route rather than the backup. The filing window varies a great deal across the country, which is why the human rights deadline in the table is the number to write down first.
There is a second trap in the two territories. Both Acts say that no compensation is payable for mental stress arising out of labour relations, and both name wrongful dismissal specifically, unless the employer acted with intent to harm you. So the distress of losing the job is not itself compensable there, however badly it was handled.
Can you complain that you were fired for claiming?
Yes, and this is a separate route from the duty to re-employ. Most boards prohibit an employer from punishing you for having a claim at all. It is called a reprisal complaint, it goes to the board rather than to a human rights commission, and the window to file is usually far shorter than either of the deadlines above.
Quebec's is the clearest written in the country. Article 32 LATMP forbids an employer from dismissing, suspending or transferring you, from taking discriminatory or reprisal measures against you, and from refusing to reinstate you contrary to a decision of the Commission, where the reason is that you suffered an employment injury or exercised a right under the Act. The complaint goes to the CNESST in writing within 30 days of the day you learn of the dismissal or the measure, and you send a copy to your employer.
Two things make it worth knowing. Under article 255 there is a presumption in your favour if the measure was taken within six months of your injury or of the day you exercised a right, which moves the burden onto the employer to explain itself. If you are unionized you must choose between a grievance and an article 32 complaint, so take advice before you elect, because you cannot run both.
In most of Canada your compensation board is not the place to take this. The table above names the right door for each province and territory. Only Quebec puts a clock in your hands, and it is thirty days.
Where do you file and how long do you have?
This is where most people lose time, because the answer is not what they expect. In only three places can you go straight to the decision maker: British Columbia, Ontario and Nunavut. Everywhere else a commission screens your complaint first and decides whether it proceeds at all. Nunavut has no human rights commission, so complaints go directly to the Nunavut Human Rights Tribunal.
The deadline is not one year everywhere either. Yukon is eighteen months. The Northwest Territories and Nunavut are two years. Newfoundland and Labrador, Alberta and Prince Edward Island have no extension provision at all. Nova Scotia can extend to twenty-four months but describes its own threshold as very high, and Yukon will only do it in very exceptional circumstances.
Quebec looks like two numbers and is really one rule. You have three years from learning of the facts to file, and that stretches further if your physical or psychological state made you unable to act. Under article 77 of the Charter, though, the Commission may refuse to deal with a complaint filed more than two years after the last relevant fact. So three years is the outer limit and two years is the one to work to.
On the compensation side the clocks are shorter and almost nobody knows them. Ontario and Prince Edward Island both give you three months to ask the board to investigate a breach of the re-employment obligation, and in Ontario a further thirty days to object to the decision that follows. Both also presume against the employer if you are dismissed within six months of being taken back, which puts the burden on them to show the dismissal had nothing to do with the injury. If your board has a re-employment duty, phone and ask what its complaint window is before you do anything else.
Where the two systems meet, the law is unsettled
Whether you can run both routes at once and whether the bar on suing your employer reaches a wrongful dismissal claim is genuinely undecided in several jurisdictions. The Supreme Court held in 2018 that Quebec's compensation statute has to be read in light of human rights accommodation principles and that the expiry of a return-to-work right is at most one factor. Courts in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have since divided on related questions, and Prince Edward Island has never ruled on them.
If you are considering both routes, get advice before you elect one. Our piece on whether you can sue your employer or run both routes at once sets out what has been decided and what has not.
What should you do the day you are let go?
- Ask for the reason in writing. Do not argue about it. Ask, and keep whatever you get.
- Write down the date, the time, who was in the room and what was actually said, while it is fresh.
- Do not sign a release or a severance package on the spot. Signing can end rights you have not been told about.
- Tell your board that you have been let go while your claim is open. Ask specifically whether a re-employment obligation applies to you.
- Diarize both deadlines, the board complaint window and the human rights filing date, from the date of the dismissal.
- Keep going to your appointments. A gap in treatment gets used against you later.
If you want a fuller picture of what happens when a board says no, our piece on what to do when your claim is denied walks through the appeal route, and what workers compensation actually pays across Canada sets out the benefit rates you should be receiving in the meantime.
Read next
- What to do after a workplace injury in Canada
- How much does workers compensation pay in Canada
- Emotional recovery after an injury
The record is what decides this
Dismissal cases turn on dates and documents, not on who sounds more reasonable. The National Workplace Injury Recovery Guide holds the daily record of symptoms, appointments, calls and costs. Your provincial workplace injury Companion Guide holds the deadlines, forms, boards and appeal routes for your jurisdiction. Your Recovery. Documented. Protected.
Last verified August 2026. This article is general information about Canadian law and it is not legal advice. We publish only law that is currently in force. Sources for every figure above are the boards and commissions themselves: WorkSafeBC, the Alberta Legislature, WCB Saskatchewan, WCB Manitoba, the WSIB, the CNESST including its own article 32 complaint form, WorkSafeNB, the Nova Scotia House of Assembly, WCB PEI, WorkplaceNL, the Yukon Workers' Safety and Compensation Board, the WSCC and each provincial and territorial human rights commission or tribunal. If you find something here that is wrong, tell us at Recovery@hurtsquare.ca and we will correct it and say that we did.