Prince Edward Island Section B Claim Deadlines

The dates that govern a Prince Edward Island Section B claim. Free. No email required. For drivers, passengers, cyclists and people on foot.

Police taking a report at a suburban collision scene.
A police report is not the notice your insurer asks for. The standard Island policy wants written notice of claim, delivered personally or by registered mail, while the twenty four hour report after a hit and run goes to a peace officer instead. Two different pieces of paper, on two different clocks.

Prince Edward Island runs the same Section B structure as the rest of Atlantic Canada. Your own insurer pays for treatment and lost income whoever caused the crash. Section D sits alongside it and covers you when the driver who hurt you had no insurance or was never identified. A claim against the at fault driver is a separate matter again, with its own clock.

THE TEN CLOCKS

Two of the ten run out inside your first month, and the first of them inside a day. Not drawn to scale. The last two do not count from the accident at all.

24 hoursReport a hit and run, under Section D
30 daysNotice of claim, the Section D notice, and the inability to work window
90 daysProof of claim, Section B and Section D
180 daysDeath benefits, or 104 weeks with continuous disability
1 yearSue your own insurer over Section B
2 yearsSue your own insurer over Section D
104 weeksLoss of income stops, from the first payment
4 yearsMedical and rehab expenses, to $50,000
ImmediatelyCopy your insurer on a court action, under Section D
Ask a lawyerSue the at fault driver

Inside the first month Longer, and each counts from its own day

Two of these run against the same insurer at different lengths, and both of them start from the date the cause of action arose rather than the date of the crash. One of them is measured in hours. One of them has no published number at all, and this page will not invent one. Everything below explains each deadline, what actually starts it, and what to write down at the moment it matters.

How long do you have to notify your insurer in Prince Edward Island?

Thirty days from the accident, or as soon as practicable after that, with the proof of claim following within ninety days. This is the Section B structure used across New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island alike.

The notice is supposed to be in writing. The standard Island policy asks for written notice of claim, delivered personally or sent by registered mail to the insurer's chief agency or head office in the province. A phone call is a good first step and worth making, but it is not what the policy asks for. Send something in writing as well and keep proof that you sent it.

Write down before you hang up. The date and time you called. The name of the person who answered. Your claim number. Which forms they are sending and when.

Notice and proof are not paperwork for its own sake. You cannot bring an action against your insurer on a Section B claim until the notice and proof requirements have been complied with, you have submitted to any medical examination the insurer reasonably asks for while the claim is pending, and the amount of the loss has been ascertained.

All three have to be done before the courthouse door opens. That is why the thirty days and the ninety days are worth keeping even when nothing looks like it is in dispute yet.

What does Section B cover in Prince Edward Island?

Medical and rehabilitation expenses to a limit of $50,000 per person, weekly loss of income payments, a housekeeping benefit and death and funeral benefits. It comes from your own policy and it pays whoever caused the collision, including when it was you.

The four year window on treatment is a deadline in its own right. Medical and rehabilitation expenses are covered where they are incurred within four years of the accident. Treatment you keep putting off can fall outside that window entirely. Funeral expenses are covered to $2,500.

Benefit What Section B pays
Medical and rehabilitation $50,000 per person, for expenses incurred within four years of the accident
Loss of income The lesser of $250 per week or eighty percent of gross weekly income, less other income replacement available to you
Housekeeping $100 per week for up to 52 weeks, for a principal unpaid housekeeper
Death, head of the household $50,000
Death, spouse of the head of the household $25,000
Death, dependant $5,000
Each survivor after the first $1,000
Funeral expenses $2,500

Section B and a claim against the at fault driver are separate and can both be pursued at the same time. One does not replace the other.

Sorting and reviewing treatment receipts at a table by a quiet window.
Four years sounds like plenty until you notice what it is counting. It is not four years to claim. It is four years for the expense itself to be incurred, so treatment postponed to a quieter year can fall outside the window while the file is still open.

What does Section B pay if you cannot work?

Loss of income has a qualifying test with a short fuse. You have to have been employed at the date of the accident, and within thirty days of the accident you have to be substantially unable to perform the essential duties of your job for a period of at least seven days. The payment is the lesser of $250 per week or eighty percent of your gross weekly income, less other income replacement available to you.

That thirty day window is easy to miss because it is not a filing deadline. It is a fact about your body that has to become true inside your first month. Someone who works through the pain for six weeks and only then stops can find the qualifying test already behind them.

Payments stop at 104 weeks, unless it is established at that point that the injury continuously prevents you from any occupation you are reasonably suited to by education, training or experience, in which case they continue. A principal unpaid housekeeper receives $100 per week for up to 52 weeks, and only while completely incapacitated and unable to perform any household duties.

The test at 104 weeks is a different test from the one at thirty days, and it is decided on what the file says by then.

If your claim were decided tomorrow, what would your file say?

People who were genuinely hurt have lost benefits over a date nobody recorded, a form that arrived late, or a call nobody wrote down. Caught early that is fixable. A year on it is an argument you have to win. The Prince Edward Island MVA Companion Guide keeps every date on this page in one place, with the form that goes with each and room to write down what actually happened. $24.99, yours to keep.

See the guide

The insurer has thirty days to pay once it has your proof of claim. For loss of income the initial payment runs on the same thirty days, then within each thirty day period after that for as long as the insurer remains liable, provided you furnish proof of continuing disability before each payment.

That last clause is the one to keep in view. The payments are not automatic once they start. Each one is conditional on proof of continuing disability arriving before it, which makes a regular appointment and a written note from your provider part of the payment schedule rather than an afterthought.

What are the Section B death benefits, and when do they apply?

Death benefits carry their own timing. Death has to follow within 180 days of the accident, or within 104 weeks where there was continuous disability throughout that period. The amounts are $50,000 for the head of the household, $25,000 for the spouse of the head of the household and $5,000 for a dependant, with a further $1,000 for each survivor after the first. A survivor has to outlive the deceased by 30 days.

The words to hold on to in the longer route are continuous disability throughout that period. Where death follows more than 180 days after the accident, the 104 week route depends on the disability having run without a break, which is again a question of what the record shows.

What can stop Section B from paying at all?

Two exclusions are worth knowing about. Section B does not pay a person who is entitled to receive the benefits of a workers' compensation law or plan. Medical, rehabilitation and loss of income benefits are also not payable where the person driving was convicted of an impaired driving offence connected with the accident.

The first exclusion turns on entitlement rather than on whether you actually claimed, which is why a crash that happened while you were working belongs in front of both your insurer and the Board rather than in front of whichever one you would prefer.

What if the other driver had no insurance or drove off?

That is Section D, and it is mandatory on every Island policy. An uninsured automobile is one where neither the owner nor the driver had applicable and collectible liability insurance. An unidentified automobile is one where the identity of the owner or the driver cannot be ascertained. A hit and run is the second kind.

Section D does not pay to the limit you bought. It is capped at the minimum limit set for a motor vehicle liability policy under the Insurance Act, whatever liability limit you chose for your own policy. The first $250 of property damage is not payable. Where one accident produces both injury and vehicle damage, injury claims have first call on ninety five percent of what is payable.

If you and your insurer cannot agree on whether you are entitled to damages or on how much, that can be settled by written agreement, by arbitration where the insurer consents, or by an action in the Supreme Court of Prince Edward Island. Two years to bring that action, running from the date the cause of action against the insurer arose.

What do you have to do after a hit and run in Prince Edward Island?

A hit and run starts a clock that runs in hours. Report the accident to a peace officer, a judicial officer or an administrator of motor vehicle laws within twenty four hours, or as soon after that as practicable. That report is a condition of the coverage, not a formality.

Then there is a second, separate notice. Within thirty days of the accident you have to deliver written notice to your insurer stating that you have a cause of action against a person whose identity cannot be ascertained, setting out the facts that support it. That is in addition to the ordinary thirty day notice of claim, not instead of it. The ordinary notice and the ninety day proof of claim work the same way as they do on Section B, delivered personally or by registered mail to the chief agent or head office in Prince Edward Island.

There is a further requirement once you go to court. If you start an action against another person who owned or operated a vehicle involved in the accident, you have to deliver a copy of the notice of action or other originating process to your own insurer immediately, personally or by registered mail.

Suing the other driver without copying your own insurer puts the Section D claim at risk, because compliance with these requirements is a precondition to recovering under it.

How long do you have to sue your own insurer in Prince Edward Island?

Section B and Section D run different clocks against the same insurer. You have one year to sue your insurer over a Section B accident benefit and two years to sue that same insurer under Section D. Missing either bars the claim.

Both run from the date the cause of action arose rather than from the date of the accident, and those are not always the same day. If your insurer has refused or stopped a Section B benefit, treat that refusal as the start of a one year clock and get advice quickly.

One year and two years, against the same company, on the same crash. Which one applies depends on which section you are claiming under.

Remember that the door has conditions on it as well as a clock. You cannot bring the Section B action until notice and proof have been complied with, you have submitted to any medical examination the insurer reasonably asks for while the claim is pending, and the amount of the loss has been ascertained.

How long do you have to sue after a car accident in Prince Edward Island?

The honest answer is that it depends on your claim, and you need to ask. That is not us avoiding the question. It is the actual position on the Island.

Most provinces rewrote their limitations legislation over the past twenty years and landed on the same shape, two years from the day you discovered the claim, with an outer limit behind it. Prince Edward Island did not. The Island still runs on the Statute of Limitations, R.S.P.E.I. 1988, c. S-7, where the period attaches to the type of claim rather than to a single uniform rule, and it has no ultimate outer limit of the kind other provinces added.

Because the framework is older and built differently, general Canadian guidance about limitation periods is not reliable guidance about Prince Edward Island. An article confidently telling you the answer may be describing somewhere else entirely.

Call a Prince Edward Island lawyer and ask for your date in writing. Do it early, because the one thing worse than not knowing your deadline is finding out after it has passed. Note that this is a different question from the one and two year clocks above, which run against your own insurer rather than against the driver who hurt you.

What if you were hurt in a vehicle at work?

Then Section B may not be your route at all. The policy does not pay a person who is entitled to receive the benefits of a workers' compensation law or plan. If you were working when the crash happened, your claim may run through the Workers Compensation Board instead, and that system has its own deadlines and its own appeal clocks.

Our Prince Edward Island WCB appeal deadlines page sets those out. Raise the crash with both your insurer and the Board early rather than choosing between them yourself.

Dates are only half of it. Knowing when something is due does not tell you how Section B runs alongside the right to sue, what the minor injury cap does to a settlement or how missed treatment can move your injury inside that cap.

Recovering after a car accident in Prince Edward Island covers the whole process and is free to read. Hurt in another province? Start from the guides by province and territory.

Last verified: August 2026
Checked against: the Prince Edward Island Standard Automobile Policy, PE S.P.F. No. 1, in effect for policies on and after 1 October 2015, for the Section B and Section D terms, the Uninsured Automobile and Unidentified Automobile Coverage Regulations made under the Insurance Act R.S.P.E.I. 1988, Cap. I-4, for the Section D notice requirements and limitation, and the Statute of Limitations, R.S.P.E.I. 1988, c. S-7, for the limitations position on a claim against the at fault driver.
We give no single figure for the limitation period on an Island court claim against the at fault driver because there is no single figure. The period depends on the type of claim under that statute, and we will not publish a number that could be wrong for yours.
Deadlines change. If you find something on this page that is out of date, write to Recovery@hurtsquare.ca and we will correct it publicly.

Keeping the record these deadlines depend on

Twenty four hours, thirty days, ninety days and one year all start from different moments, which sounds manageable until you are three weeks in and cannot remember which day you called.

Recovery First. Pressure Last.

If your crash was a month ago, the thirty days for written notice has just gone by and your ninety days for the proof of claim is a third spent. The policy asks for notice within thirty days or as soon as practicable after that, so send it in writing now and keep proof that you sent it.

EVERYTHING ON THIS PAGE, AND WHAT COMES NEXT

The Prince Edward Island MVA Companion Guide

This page tells you the dates. The guide walks you through them, and gives you somewhere to write down what happened on each one.

  • Every deadline on this page, with what actually starts each clock
  • Section B and Section D side by side, and which clock runs against which
  • The written notice the policy asks for, and what to keep proof of
  • Fillable on your phone, at 11pm, in bed

$24.99 · instant download · yours to keep

See the Prince Edward Island Companion Guide

Most people take it with the National MVA Recovery Guide, the daily record of symptoms, appointments, calls and costs that a claim is eventually judged on. People who have only one tend to end up with a careful record aimed at the wrong process, or the right dates and nothing to put in front of them.

Not ready for that? The scene checklist for the first three days is at hurtsquare.ca/72. It is free and asks nothing of you.

This page is general information for people in Prince Edward Island. It is not legal or medical advice. Rules differ by province and change over time. Confirm anything specific to your situation with a lawyer or your insurer.