Infectious Disease Emergency Leave (Ontario ESA)

Infectious Disease Emergency Leave (IDEL) is a job-protected leave under section 50.1 of Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA), with the operating detail set out in O. Reg. 228/20. During the pandemic this regulation did far more than create a leave: it automatically converted reduced-hours situations into leave, and it temporarily switched off the ESA’s layoff, constructive-dismissal, and complaint rules for COVID-19-related cuts.

These are historical rules — most of them no longer in force. The COVID-19 special rules in O. Reg. 228/20 were tied to a defined “COVID-19 period” that began March 1, 2020 and ended July 30, 2022, and the temporary paid portion of the leave ended March 31, 2023. They are recorded here in full because their aftermath is still live — old layoffs that were deemed to be IDEL, and whether recall rights or constructive-dismissal exposure survived the period — but they are not a guide to current-state entitlements. For the in-force leave framework see Job-Protected Leaves of Absence, and for current termination, layoff, and severance rules see Termination and Severance.

One idea recurs throughout. Where these rules shielded an employer, they shielded it only within the ESA. The ESA is a floor, not a ceiling, and Ontario courts have repeatedly held that a reduction safe under the regulation could still be a constructive dismissal at common law. Meeting the regulation’s conditions was the start of the analysis, not the end of it.

Which diseases count, and the COVID-19 window

The regulation designates illnesses caused by a novel coronavirus as the infectious diseases that can trigger this leave — and it names SARS, MERS, and COVID-19 as examples. So this is not an all-purpose “I’m sick” leave; it is keyed to that specific family of diseases.

Two threshold pieces decide whether the leave is even in play: which diseases are “designated,” and the dates that bound the COVID-19 rules.

The timing piece is the “COVID-19 period,” which the regulation defines as beginning March 1, 2020 and ending July 30, 2022. That window matters because the COVID-19 designation only counts toward one of the leave’s qualifying reasons during that period. The other infectious-disease grounds are not tied to those dates.

A scope point employers often miss: most of the regulation’s machinery does not apply to unionized employees. The rule excluding certain leave reasons, and the deemed-IDEL provisions — the sections that turned COVID-era layoffs and reduced hours into leave — are carved out for workers covered by a collective agreement.

In practice, the live question now is rarely the leave itself but its aftermath: old layoffs that were deemed to be IDEL, and whether recall rights or constructive-dismissal exposure survived the period.

Source: Infectious Disease Emergency Leave (O. Reg. 228/20), ss. 1–2.

The statute is the floor, not the ceiling. Treating a layoff as deemed IDEL under this regulation removed the ESA’s termination consequences, but Ontario courts have held it did not necessarily prevent the same layoff from being a constructive dismissal at common law.

When the leave starts and which reasons count (entitlement triggers)

Infectious Disease Emergency Leave is the unpaid leave under the ESA that an employee can take when they cannot work for a listed COVID-19 reason, and the entitlement does not begin on the day a worker first asks for it — the regulation backdates it to fixed start dates written into the rule.

The deemed start dates are:

• For most of the COVID-19 reasons in the Act, entitlement is treated as having started January 25, 2020.
• For the reason tied to an emergency order that was carried over under the Reopening Ontario Act, entitlement is treated as having started July 24, 2020.

That backdating matters because it covers absences that happened before the regulation was even on the books. An employee out for a qualifying reason in early 2020 is still protected.

There was also a separate paid IDEL — a short, capped paid leave layered on top of the unpaid version. That paid entitlement ended on March 31, 2023. The unpaid leave framework and its qualifying reasons are a different question from whether paid days are still available, and the paid days are not.

Two errors recur here: assuming IDEL is gone entirely because the paid portion expired, and starting the clock on the wrong date. The qualifying reason has to fit one of the categories the Act lists — a general worry about being at work is not automatically a qualifying reason.

Source: Infectious Disease Emergency Leave (O. Reg. 228/20), ss. 3–11.

Reduced hours became deemed leave — and when it didn't

During the COVID-19 period, an employee whose hours were temporarily reduced or cut to zero by the employer for pandemic-related reasons was automatically treated as being on Infectious Disease Emergency Leave — backdated to March 1, 2020 — unless the employment had been terminated, severed, or the employee had already received written notice of termination. Rather than leaving employers to formally put workers on leave during the pandemic, the regulation did it automatically. This was the most consequential move in O. Reg. 228/20.

The prescribed reason and the automatic trigger. The regulation adds a specific reason to the leave framework: an employee whose hours were temporarily reduced or eliminated by the employer for reasons tied to the designated infectious disease (COVID-19). Any worker who stopped performing their duties for that reason, at any point during the COVID-19 period, is treated by law as having been on Infectious Disease Emergency Leave for that entire stretch of non-work. The entitlement itself is backdated to March 1, 2020 — so it covers the early lockdown months, even before the regulation was formally in place.

What rules still apply, and what is carved out. The deemed leave is not a legal vacuum. Most of the requirements and protections that ordinarily go with a leave under the ESA still apply. But two categories of rules are carved out for deemed-leave employees:

• The notice-of-leave requirements in subsections 50.1(2) and (3) of the Act — the provisions that normally require an employee to give the employer notice before going on leave — do not apply. An employee cannot be faulted for failing to formally notify the employer of a leave that the regulation imposed automatically.
• The benefit-plan maintenance obligations are modified for a specific subset of situations. If an employee had already stopped participating in a benefit plan as of May 29, 2020, the employer is relieved of the usual obligation to maintain that employee’s coverage under section 51(1) for the rest of the COVID-19 period. Symmetrically, if the employer had already stopped making its own contributions to a benefit plan connected to that employee as of May 29, 2020, the employer’s contribution obligation under section 51(3) is also suspended for that same period.

The regulation also makes clear that none of this retroactively undoes any payments or benefits the employer actually provided between March 1, 2020 and May 29, 2020.

When an employee is not on deemed leave. The deemed-leave status does not stick if the employment relationship has been formally ended. The regulation distinguishes by ground and by date:

• For certain specified termination and severance grounds — including a straightforward quit under clause 56(1)(a) and certain severances under clause 63 — the deemed-leave designation is knocked out whenever those events occurred on or after March 1, 2020.
• For other termination and severance grounds (the frustration-of-contract and just-cause grounds under the ESA, and certain other severance triggers), the carve-out only applies if the employment ended before May 29, 2020. Those employees keep their deemed-leave status if the event happened on or after that date.

There is also a notice-of-termination carve-out. If the employer gave the employee written notice of termination in accordance with sections 57 or 58 of the Act — the ESA’s individual and mass-termination notice provisions — that employee is likewise not on deemed leave. The only way back in is mutual agreement: both the employer and the employee must agree to withdraw the notice of termination before the deemed-leave status can be restored.

In practice, these carve-outs mean the deemed-leave rules could not be used to retroactively undo a termination, and an employer could not leave a notice of termination outstanding while simultaneously treating the person as on protected leave.

Source: Infectious Disease Emergency Leave (O. Reg. 228/20), ss. 4–5.

The statute is the floor, not the ceiling. The deemed-leave designation under this regulation operated only within the ESA framework. Ontario courts have confirmed that an employer’s decision to reduce or eliminate an employee’s hours — even if it triggered deemed IDEL status under the regulation — could still amount to a constructive dismissal at common law. Deemed IDEL protected employers from ESA termination and severance exposure; it did not extinguish an employee’s common-law right to treat the employment as ended and claim damages.

Cutting hours or pay wasn't a "layoff"

During the COVID-19 period, when an employer temporarily cut an employee’s hours of work, eliminated those hours, or reduced their wages for reasons connected to the designated infectious disease, the ESA did not treat that as a layoff under its termination and severance rules. Normally a long enough layoff can trigger termination or even severance obligations — but for these pandemic-related cuts, the employee was taken out of the layoff rules and was not considered laid off because of the reduction.

The key conditions:

• The change has to be temporary and for reasons related to the infectious disease during the COVID-19 period. A cut made for unrelated business reasons is not covered.
• “Reduced hours” and “reduced wages” are measured against a baseline. For an employee with a regular work week, it is their last regular week before March 1, 2020. For someone without a regular week, it is their average over the 12 weeks before that date. And if they had not been there a full week before March 1, 2020, the comparison is against their busiest (or highest-earning) week.
• The baseline ignores oddball weeks — vacation, any period the employee could not work or was not available for work, a disciplinary suspension, or a strike or lock-out are excluded so the comparison is fair.

There are limits. This did not apply to employees whose employment was already terminated or severed before May 29, 2020 — those people keep their ordinary rights. And it does not cover the limited situation under clause 63(1)(d).

This rule reshaped how layoffs were counted during the pandemic, so the dates and the reason both have to be checked before assuming an employee is covered.

Source: Infectious Disease Emergency Leave (O. Reg. 228/20), ss. 6–9.

The statute is the floor, not the ceiling. This rule changed only the ESA. It did not block an employee from arguing constructive dismissal at common law over a cut in hours or pay, so a reduction that was safe under the regulation could still carry common-law risk.

Cutting hours or wages isn't constructive dismissal (under the ESA)

Under O. Reg. 228/20, a temporary cut to an employee’s hours or wages for reasons related to COVID-19 during the COVID-19 period did not count as a constructive dismissal under the ESA. If an employer temporarily reduced or eliminated an employee’s hours, or temporarily cut their wages, for reasons tied to COVID-19, that move did not count as a constructive dismissal under the Employment Standards Act.

There are real limits on this:

• It has to be temporary. The protection covers a temporary reduction or elimination of hours, or a temporary cut in wages. A permanent change is a different matter.
• The reason matters. The change has to be for reasons related to the designated infectious disease (COVID-19). A cut the employer would have made anyway, for ordinary business reasons, does not get the same shelter.
• It only applies during the “COVID-19 period.” The relief is tied to that defined window, not to any reduction at any time.
• It does not rescue earlier terminations. If the employee’s employment was already terminated or severed under the ESA’s termination and severance provisions before May 29, 2020, this protection does not apply to them.

The error to avoid is treating this as a blank cheque to cut pay or hours indefinitely. The protection is narrow and time-bound. Outside its conditions, the ordinary rules apply.

Source: Infectious Disease Emergency Leave (O. Reg. 228/20), s. 7.

The statute is the floor, not the ceiling. At common law, an employer’s unilateral and significant cut to an employee’s hours or pay is treated as a constructive dismissal, letting the employee treat the job as ended and sue for damages. This regulation overrides that result under the ESA for qualifying COVID-19-related reductions during the COVID-19 period; it does not change an employee’s separate common-law rights, so getting advice matters.

Cut-hours complaints treated as never filed

During the COVID-19 period, an ESA complaint claiming that a pandemic-related cut to an employee’s hours or wages amounted to termination or severance is deemed never to have been filed. Normally, if an employer cuts someone’s hours or pay, the employee can complain to the Ministry that they have effectively been let go. During the COVID-19 period, that door was shut.

The rule: if the employer temporarily cut or eliminated an employee’s hours, or temporarily reduced their wages, and it happened during the COVID-19 period for reasons tied to the designated infectious disease, any complaint saying that cut amounted to termination or severance is treated as if it was never filed at all. Not dismissed on the merits, not paused. Deemed not filed.

But the freeze does not swallow everything. It does not apply where the complaint is about:

• An actual termination or severance for the genuine reasons the ESA already recognizes — the real let-go grounds, not a temporary hours cut.
• A termination or severance on certain other ESA grounds that happened before May 29, 2020.

In plain terms: a true firing or a layoff that crossed the ESA’s own lines still gets its day, and complaints rooted in events before the late-May 2020 cutoff are not blocked by this section.

This was not a permanent shield. It only covers temporary, pandemic-driven changes during the defined COVID-19 period. A reduction stretched past those limits, or a real termination dressed up as a temporary cut, would not hold under it.

Source: Infectious Disease Emergency Leave (O. Reg. 228/20), s. 8.

The statute is the floor, not the ceiling. This regulation only blocks an ESA complaint about constructive dismissal; it does not change an employee’s right to pursue constructive dismissal at common law, where the same hours or wage cut may still be actionable.

How the rules applied to temp agency assignment employees

The Infectious Disease Emergency Leave regulation also covered temporary help agency assignment employees, applying the same hours-and-wages and layoff-protection rules to them with whatever adjustments their situation required. The regulation says plainly that it covers them too.

In practice that means the key protections carried over. When an agency temporarily cut an assignment employee’s hours, wages, or both for reasons tied to the designated infectious disease during the COVID-19 period, that cut did not count as a layoff under the ESA’s termination and severance rules — just as it did not for other employees. The rules for working out whether hours or wages were actually “reduced” (measured against the work the employee was getting before March 1, 2020) applied to assignment employees as well.

The wrinkle is the phrase “with necessary modifications.” Assignment employees do not fit the standard mould — their work comes in placements with different clients, and a single regular work week before the pandemic may be harder to pin down. The regulation did not spell out a separate formula; it directed that the same tests be applied, adjusted so they make sense for how agency work actually runs.

The error to avoid is assuming agency workers fell outside these temporary rules and were therefore laid off or terminated on the ordinary timeline. They were not carved out. The other side of that coin is timing — the COVID-19 period these protections hung on has since ended, so this is now mostly a rule for assessing what happened during that window.

For how assignment employees are handled outside the pandemic rules, see Exemptions, Special Rules and Temporary Help Agencies.

Source: Infectious Disease Emergency Leave (O. Reg. 228/20), s. 10.

The statute is the floor, not the ceiling. Under common law, a unilateral reduction in an employee’s hours or wages is capable of amounting to constructive dismissal, entitling the employee to treat the contract as ended and claim damages in lieu of reasonable notice. The ESA regulation took the opposite approach for the COVID-19 period: those same reductions — if pandemic-related — were expressly not layoffs and did not trigger the statutory termination or severance clock. That ESA shield applied equally to assignment employees under this section, but it did not extinguish any common-law constructive dismissal claim the employee might otherwise have had.

Commencement and transitional dates (paid COVID-19 leave ended March 31, 2023)

O. Reg. 228/20 set out when Infectious Disease Emergency Leave took effect and backdated the various reasons for leave to specific deemed start dates, with paid COVID-19 leave ending March 31, 2023. The leave itself is not “new from the day you read about it” — for several reasons tied to COVID-19, the regulation deems entitlement to have begun on dates in early 2020.

The deemed dates are:

• For the listed COVID-19 reasons (the ones an employee can take the leave for), entitlement is treated as having started January 25, 2020.
• Where the reason is a continued emergency order touching the designated disease, entitlement is deemed to have started July 24, 2020.
• For an employee whose hours or wages were temporarily cut or eliminated by the employer for reasons related to the disease, the deemed start is March 1, 2020, and that person is treated as being on IDEL for any time in the COVID-19 period they are off for that reason.
• The entitlement to paid leave under the Act ended March 31, 2023.

The error to avoid is assuming the leave only counts from when an employer formally placed someone on it. The deeming rules reach back, which affects whether a reduction in hours was a layoff or a constructive dismissal during that window. When sorting out an old reduction or a benefit-plan question from that period, the exact dates govern.

Source: Infectious Disease Emergency Leave (O. Reg. 228/20), ss. 3–11.

The statute is the floor, not the ceiling. These deeming rules govern the ESA only; outside the regulation’s window, a unilateral cut to hours or pay can still amount to a constructive dismissal at common law, so the statutory protection is not the whole picture.

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This page is general information about Ontario employment law, not legal advice. The COVID-19 IDEL rules are closed and time-bounded, but their aftermath turns on exact dates and facts — and a reduction that was safe under the regulation could still carry common-law exposure — so obtain advice before relying on any of the above.