Ontario Public Holiday Pay Calculator

The divide-by-20 formula, precisely

Section 24(1)(a) of the Employment Standards Act, 2000 is exact, and three details in it are easy to get wrong.

• It is work weeks, a defined term — a recurring seven-day period your employer selects for scheduling, or Sunday to Saturday if none is selected. Not calendar weeks.
• The window is the four work weeks before the work week in which the holiday occurred — the holiday’s own week is excluded.
• The divisor is always 20, regardless of how many days you actually worked.

Excluded from the numerator: overtime pay, premium pay, previous public holiday pay, termination and severance pay, tips and gratuities (s. 1(1)(d)), and discretionary bonuses unrelated to hours or production.

The last-and-first rule means both, not either

Section 26(2) removes the entitlement where the employee fails, without reasonable cause, to work all of their last regularly scheduled day before the holiday or all of their first regularly scheduled day after it.

Read it as a forfeiture clause: the “or” attaches to the failure. Failing either day forfeits, which means you must work both. The days do not have to be adjacent to the holiday — a scheduled day a week either side still counts.

There is no minimum service requirement in Ontario. A brand new employee qualifies, provided they meet the last-and-first test.

Premium pay, substitute days, and who actually chooses

Section 24(2) sets premium pay at at least 1.5× your regular rate. But the structure of the choice is widely misdescribed.

Under s. 27, where the holiday is ordinarily a working day and you agree to work, the default is your regular rate for the hours worked plus a substitute day off with public holiday pay. The alternative — public holiday pay plus premium pay, with no substitute day — applies only if you and your employer agree. You hold a veto, not a free choice.

Section 28 is different. In hospitals, continuous operations, hotels, motels, tourist resorts, restaurants and taverns, where you can be required to work, no agreement is needed and the employer chooses.

A substitute day must fall within three months, or within twelve if you and your employer agree in writing. Your employer must give you a written statement before the holiday setting out the substitute date.

Nine holidays, and 26 December is one of them

New Year’s Day, Family Day, Good Friday, Victoria Day, Canada Day, Labour Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and — in the statute’s own words — “December 26”. Ontario is the only province where Boxing Day is a paid statutory holiday.

Not on the list: the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Remembrance Day, Easter Monday and the Civic Holiday in August. The Ministry states this plainly — employers may give those days, but the ESA does not require it.

Section 31 is worth knowing: if you receive premium pay for working a public holiday, those hours do not count toward overtime that week.

The construction exemption is a trigger, not a rate

O. Reg. 285/01 s. 9(2) removes Part X — public holidays — from a construction employee who already receives 7.7% or more of their wages for vacation or holiday pay (9.7% at five years or more).

Those figures are widely misdescribed as “the construction vacation rate”. They are not a rate at all. The regulation sets nothing; it is a conditional switch that turns the holiday entitlement off once a combined percentage is being paid.

Also exempt from Part X: firefighters, most commission salespeople, taxi drivers, residential building superintendents, and seasonal hotel or resort employees provided room and board. Fruit, vegetable and tobacco harvesters gain the entitlement after 13 weeks.