Ontario HR Compliance · CLC Part III (labour standards)
Maternity, Parental, and Caregiving Leaves (CLC Part III)
The Canada Labour Code job-protects maternity, parental, critical-illness, and compassionate care leave; income during the leave comes separately from federal EI benefits, not from the employer.
The Canada Labour Code job-protects several longer leaves connected to family and caregiving: maternity leave, parental leave, critical-illness and caregiving leaves, and compassionate care leave. Compassionate care leave is the one figure this note can state with confidence: up to 28 weeks within a 52-week period.
What these leaves have in common matters more than any single week-count: they are job-protection provisions under Part III, meaning the employer must hold the employee’s position and can’t penalize them for taking the leave. They do not, on their own, replace the employee’s income. Income during maternity, parental, and caregiving leave comes separately through federal Employment Insurance (EI) benefits, administered and paid by the federal government, not by the employer.
The exact number of protected weeks for maternity, parental, and the critical-illness/caregiving leaves is not stated with confidence here — several of these entitlements were amended in recent years and interact with EI benefit durations, which change independently of the job-protection period. Confirm the current week-counts at the federal labour standards leaves page rather than relying on a remembered figure.
This is general information, not legal advice; confirm current entitlement lengths and how they interact with EI benefits at the source before relying on them.
Source: Government of Canada — Leaves under federal labour standards ·
Last reviewed .
Confidence: Single source
Related notes
- Paid Medical Leave (CLC Part III, s.239) — Every federally regulated employee accrues up to 10 days of paid medical leave a year regardless of employer size, a right added to the Canada Labour Code effective December 1, 2022.
- Personal, Bereavement, and Family-Violence Leave (CLC Part III) — Federally regulated employees have a suite of short job-protected leaves — personal, bereavement, pregnancy-loss, and family-violence leave — each with its own paid-day component.
- Federal vs. Ontario Jurisdiction: The Employment-Law "Instead Of" Rule — A federally regulated employer follows the Canada Labour Code and related federal statutes in place of Ontario employment law, not on top of it — the federal regime replaces the ESA, OHSA, Human Rights Code, AODA and Pay Equity Act rather than adding to them.