Three EI rules are quietly working in your favour — and they expire October 10

Since March 2025, Employment Insurance has been running with three temporary measures aimed at workers caught by the trade war. They apply to claims established between March 30, 2025 and October 10, 2026 — and that phrase does a lot of work. It's the date your claim starts, not the date you were laid off, that decides whether you get them.

With counter-tariffs escalating on September 8, this is worth knowing before you need it.

The three measures

• The one-week waiting period is waived. Normally EI pays nothing for your first week. Under the pilot, week one is paid — roughly $729 at the top of the scale.
• Separation money doesn't delay your claim. Ordinarily severance, termination pay and vacation payouts are allocated forward, pushing your EI start date out by weeks or months. That treatment is suspended, so you can collect EI and hold your severance.
• Long-tenured workers get up to 20 extra weeks of regular benefits, on top of the standard entitlement.

The second one is the big one. A worker with three months of severance would normally wait roughly three months for EI to begin. Under the pilot, both arrive at once.

What EI actually pays in 2026

The formula is 55% of your average weekly insurable earnings, computed from your best 14 to 22 weeks in the last year — the number of weeks depends on your regional unemployment rate, and using only your best weeks means a few slow paycheques don't drag the rate down.

Insurable earnings are capped at $68,900 for 2026, which is what produces the ceiling:

• $52,000 salary: about $550 a week, or roughly $2,380 a month.
• $68,900 or more: the maximum, $729 a week — about $3,160 a month.

Duration runs from 14 to 45 weeks, set by your insurable hours and your region's unemployment rate.

Two things people miss. EI is taxable, and the tax withheld at source is often too little, so a spring tax bill is common. And the ceiling is flat: at $120,000 you receive exactly what someone at $68,900 receives, which is why the replacement rate feels so thin at higher incomes. Your take-home pay breakdown shows the gap between an EI cheque and the paycheque it's replacing.

Whether the deadline moves

Ottawa's $7.5 billion tariff-response package, announced August 25, includes $3.5 billion in Rapid Response Supports for Workers and Employers, described as delivering "extended and additional EI temporary flexibilities." That strongly suggests another extension past October 10 — but the operative details haven't been published yet, and until they are, October 10 is the date on the books.

If a layoff looks possible

• Apply the week you stop working, not after severance runs out. The measures key off your claim date.
• Don't sign a separation agreement that delays your record of employment without understanding what it does to your claim start.
• Build the runway number. After-tax severance plus EI, divided by an honest monthly burn — the cost-of-living benchmarks give you a defensible denominator.
• Watch for the extension notice in October if you're in a tariff-exposed sector.

The takeaway

These three rules are worth thousands to anyone laid off this fall, and they hinge entirely on a date. If your job is exposed to the tariff fight, know where October 10 sits relative to your own timeline — and file the day you're eligible rather than the day it feels necessary.

After-tax and cost-of-living figures delivered by Metrestick. Underlying data: CRA 2026 federal and provincial income-tax parameters and Statistics Canada household spending (Open Government Licence – Canada / Statistics Canada Open Licence), 2026, with EI parameters from Employment and Social Development Canada. Benefit examples are illustrative.