EI Sickness Benefits 2026: Your Exact Weekly Amount by Salary ($729 Max, 26 Weeks)

The 2026 Numbers: 55% of Your Pay, Capped at $729 a Week

EI sickness benefits pay 55% of your average insurable weekly earnings, up to a maximum of $729 per week in 2026, for a maximum of 26 weeks. The cap comes straight from the math: the 2026 Maximum Insurable Earnings (MIE) ceiling is $68,900, and 55% of $68,900 divided by 52 weeks is $728.75 — which Service Canada pays as $729. These are the figures for the 2026 benefit year; the MIE resets every January 1, so a claim that starts in 2026 uses the $68,900 ceiling even if your illness continues into 2027.

The practical consequence: anyone earning $68,900 or more gets the same $729 a week. A nurse earning $80,000 and an executive earning $200,000 receive identical sickness cheques. Below the ceiling, your benefit scales with your pay. Here is what the 2026 math produces at common salary levels, assuming steady earnings (variable earners — see the best-weeks section below, because your real number can be higher):

Look at the last two rows. The part most people miss is how fast the effective replacement rate falls above the ceiling: at $85,000 you are replacing 44.6% of your pay; at $100,000 it is 37.9%. EI sickness is a floor, not income replacement — which is exactly why employer short-term disability plans and personal disability insurance exist for higher earners.

How Many Weeks You Actually Get

The maximum is 26 weeks, but the number you receive is driven by your medical certificate. If your doctor certifies that you will be unable to work for 8 weeks, you get 8 weeks of benefits. The 26-week ceiling matters most for serious conditions — cancer treatment, major surgery with long rehabilitation, severe mental-health episodes — where recovery genuinely runs past the half-year mark.

Two timing rules shape the claim:

• The 1-week waiting period. The first week of every claim is unpaid. Service Canada describes it as the deductible on the insurance — you serve it once per claim and never get it back.
• The claim period. When you open an EI claim, it stays open for a set window — usually 52 weeks, extendable to a maximum of 2 years in some situations. All weeks of all EI benefit types you draw must fit inside that window. If you collected regular EI benefits in the past 52 weeks, you may not get the full 26 weeks of sickness benefits on top, because they share the same claim.

That second rule catches people who get sick shortly after a layoff. If you were collecting regular benefits after losing your job and then fall seriously ill, your sickness weeks draw from the same claim period — a detail worth confirming with Service Canada before assuming you have the full 26 weeks. Our guide to maximizing EI benefits covers how the benefit types stack inside one claim.

Do You Qualify? The Three Tests

ESDC applies three conditions to every sickness claim:

• You are unable to work for medical reasons — illness, injury, quarantine, or any medical condition that prevents you from working. You must remain otherwise available for work if it were not for the medical condition.
• Your regular weekly earnings have dropped by more than 40% for at least one week.
• You accumulated 600 insured hours in the 52 weeks before the start of your claim, or since the start of your last claim, whichever is shorter.

The 600-hour rule is worth pausing on. It is a flat national requirement — unlike regular EI benefits, where the hours needed vary from 420 to 700 with your regional unemployment rate. Six hundred hours is roughly 16 weeks of full-time work, so most full-time employees qualify easily. Part-time workers, new hires, and people returning from a previous leave are the ones who get caught short.

The medical certificate: who can sign it

Every claim needs a medical certificate showing you are unable to work for medical reasons and for approximately how long. Your practitioner can use the Service Canada form (INS5140) or their own letterhead. The list of who can sign is broader than most people expect: medical doctors, nurse practitioners, psychologists, chiropractors, dentists, podiatrists, optometrists, midwives, and registered nurses in isolated areas where a doctor is unavailable. The practitioner should be practising in Canada or the United States, and the condition must be in their field. You may not be asked to submit the certificate with your application — but keep it for 6 years, because Service Canada can request it later, and a missing certificate means repaying benefits.

Best Weeks: How Service Canada Calculates Your Exact Number

Your benefit is not literally salary divided by 52. Service Canada takes your highest-paid 14 to 22 weeks from the qualifying period — your "best weeks" — adds up the insurable earnings from those weeks, divides by the number of best weeks for your region, and multiplies by 55%. The number of best weeks used depends on the unemployment rate in your economic region: high-unemployment regions use as few as 14 weeks, low-unemployment regions use up to 22.

This matters enormously for anyone with variable income. Take a Mississauga retail manager who earned $1,400 a week through the holiday rush but averaged $900 a week the rest of the year. A naive average might suggest a benefit near $500 a week. But if her region uses 14 best weeks and her top 14 weeks averaged $1,300, her benefit is 55% of $1,300 — about $715 a week. Insurable earnings include wages, tips, bonuses, and commissions, so a strong bonus quarter inside your qualifying period raises the cheque.

The reverse trap: applying after a long stretch of reduced hours. If your hours were already cut before you stopped working entirely, your best weeks may be behind you — and waiting longer to apply pushes them out of the qualifying window. Apply as soon as you stop working.

The Family Supplement: A Top-Up for Lower-Income Parents

If your annual net family income is $25,921 or less, you have at least one child under 18, and you or your spouse receive the Canada Child Benefit, Service Canada automatically adds the family supplement to your weekly payments — no separate application. The total weekly amount still cannot exceed $729. A household at that income level should also confirm it is receiving the quarterly GST/HST credit, which continues untouched during a medical leave.

EI Sickness vs CPP Disability: Which One, and When

These two programs solve different problems, and the right move for a serious diagnosis is often both — in sequence. EI sickness is the short-term bridge; CPP disability (CPP-D) is the long-term income for a condition that is severe and prolonged. The 2026 comparison:

Notice the levels: maxed-out EI sickness (~$3,159/month) pays nearly twice the CPP-D maximum. Moving from EI sickness to CPP-D is a real income drop, and the CPP-D assessment takes months. The sequencing rule I give clients with a serious long-term diagnosis: file the CPP-D application while the EI sickness benefits are still flowing, around week 8 to 12 of the claim — not after week 26 when the EI cheques stop. CPP-D also interacts with your eventual retirement pension; see how the disability benefit fits against the regular CPP payment amounts for 2026.

If you are within a few years of 65, the calculus shifts again: CPP-D converts to a retirement pension at 65, and your OAS begins. A lower-income senior coming off a long disability should also check the GIS income thresholds, because a year of reduced income can open GIS eligibility that a full working year would have closed.

Taxes, Top-Ups, and Working While on Claim

Three mechanics that change your net outcome:

• The benefit is taxable, and the source deduction is light. Tax comes off each payment, but if you earned a normal salary for part of the year, the at-source deduction usually undershoots your real marginal rate. Set aside a buffer for a balance owing at filing time.
• Employer top-ups exist — ask. Some employers pay additional money to employees on sick leave on top of EI. Check with HR before you apply, and also confirm whether an employer short-term disability plan applies first; Service Canada directs you to check employer coverage before filing an EI sickness claim at all.
• Earnings must go on your biweekly report. You file a report every 2 weeks, and any work or earnings must be declared. Undeclared earnings become an overpayment you repay later. If you can work partially during recovery, declare it — earnings reduce the benefit under the working-while-on-claim rules, but hiding them costs more.

One more boundary: travel. You are not usually eligible for sickness benefits while outside Canada, with a narrow exception for obtaining medical treatment not readily available where you live. A recovery trip to visit family abroad can void the weeks you are away.

The 28-Day Gap: Plan the First Month

The first payment arrives about 28 days after you apply, assuming your application is complete. Add the unpaid waiting week, and the start of a medical leave is realistically a month with no income. The order of operations that protects you:

• Apply immediately — the day you stop working, not the day the medical paperwork feels complete. You can submit the medical certificate after the fact if asked.
• Bridge from cash savings or a TFSA, not credit. A TFSA withdrawal is tax-free and restores contribution room next year.
• Set up direct deposit and check My Service Canada Account for claim status rather than waiting on mail.

The Bottom Line: $729 a Week Is the Ceiling, Not the Plan

For the 2026 benefit year, EI sickness benefits pay 55% of your average insurable weekly earnings to a maximum of $729 a week for up to 26 weeks — a maximum payout of $18,954. It is a genuinely useful bridge: a flat 600-hour qualifying rule, a broad list of practitioners who can sign the certificate, and a best-weeks calculation that treats variable earners fairly. But it is a bridge with a hard end. At $100,000 of salary it replaces barely 38% of your pay, and at week 26 it stops regardless of your health. The households that come through a medical leave intact are the ones that treated EI sickness as the first layer — stacked under employer top-ups, disability insurance, and a CPP-D application filed early — rather than the whole answer.