Your mother passed away last night, and somewhere in the middle of everything else, you have to tell your manager something today. You shouldn't have to research employment law at 11 p.m. to know what you're allowed to ask for.
So here's the answer first. Bereavement leave in Quebec is five days when someone in your immediate family passes away, and your employer has to pay you for the first two. There's no minimum length of service, so it applies whether you started last month or twenty years ago. And there's no deadline for taking the days, despite what a lot of HR websites will tell you.
This guide covers who qualifies for five days and who qualifies for one, what those two paid days actually pay, and exactly what you're required to tell your employer. It also covers the much longer leave that exists for the hardest situations, how Quebec compares to Ontario, and where the widely repeated "15-day rule" came from. Every figure here comes from the Act respecting labour standards itself, with the section numbers, so you can check any of it or show it to an employer who disagrees.
Bereavement leave in Quebec at a glance
Two different entitlements sit in the law, and which one applies depends entirely on your relationship to the person who passed away.
| Who passed away | Days off | Paid |
|---|---|---|
| Your spouse | 5 days | First 2 |
| Your child, or your spouse's child | 5 days | First 2 |
| Your father, mother, or one of your parents | 5 days | First 2 |
| Your brother or sister | 5 days | First 2 |
| Your son-in-law or daughter-in-law | 1 day | Unpaid |
| Your grandparent or grandchild | 1 day | Unpaid |
| Your spouse's father, mother, or parent | 1 day | Unpaid |
| Your spouse's brother or sister | 1 day | Unpaid |
Three things apply to both rows, and each one contradicts something commonly said online:
- No minimum service. Full time, part time, temporary, casual, or on call, it makes no difference.
- No deadline. Nothing in the Act says the days expire.
- These are minimums, not maximums. Your collective agreement or workplace policy may give more, and many do.
How many days of bereavement leave do you get in Quebec?
Losing someone and then having to negotiate for time off is a lot to carry at once, so it helps to know the number is fixed and it isn't up to your employer.
You get five days when your spouse, your child, your spouse's child, your father, mother, one of your parents, your brother, or your sister passes away. Your employer pays you for the first two of those days. The other three are unpaid. For a wider circle of relatives, you get one unpaid day. This comes from sections 80 and 80.1 of the Act respecting labour standards, and it applies to essentially every employee in Quebec.
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The five-day leave: who counts as immediate family
Section 80 lists the relationships exactly: your spouse, your child, the child of your spouse, your brother, your sister, your father, your mother, or one of your parents.
"Spouse" in Quebec includes common-law partners, and "one of your parents" covers family structures where a child has more than two legal parents. The Act doesn't distinguish between a step-parent who raised you and a biological parent you hadn't spoken to in years. If the legal relationship is there, the entitlement is there.
The five days don't have to be taken together, and they aren't tied to the funeral date. Section 80 says the leave is for "the death or the funeral," which is deliberately broad. CNESST describes it as covering the death and the preparation of the funeral, which is most of what actually fills those days.
The one-day leave: grandparents, grandchildren, and in-laws
Section 80.1 covers a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law, one of your grandparents, one of your grandchildren, or your spouse's brother, sister, father, mother, or one of your spouse's parents. One day, unpaid.
This is the entitlement people search for most and find the least reliable information about. Two corrections are worth making. First, the Act contains no annual limit on it, despite the "one unpaid day per year" phrasing that circulates widely. Second, one day is genuinely all the law requires, which is a hard thing to hear when you were close to a grandparent. If that's your situation, the practical move is to ask your employer directly rather than assume the statutory minimum is the ceiling. Many workplaces are more generous than the Act, and this is exactly the gap they tend to fill.
What "without reduction of wages" actually pays you
Section 80 doesn't say your employer pays a percentage or an indemnity. It says you may be absent "without reduction of wages," which means you're paid what you would have earned had you worked those days.
Say Marc earns $26 an hour and normally works 7.5-hour days. That's $195 for a day of work. He takes the Monday after his father passed away and the Thursday of the funeral. His employer owes him $390 for those two days. The remaining three days he takes to sort out the arrangements and the paperwork come out of his own pocket.
Those unpaid days are worth planning around, particularly if money is already tight. Quebec's death benefit can help with the immediate costs, and our guide to applying for the QPP death benefit walks through who can claim it and how long it takes.
No, there's no 15-day deadline on bereavement leave in Quebec
If you've already found a page telling you to use the days within 15 days or lose them, you can stop worrying about that clock. It doesn't exist.
Section 80.2 is the only part of the Act that governs how you take this leave. Here it is in full: "In the circumstances referred to in section 80 or 80.1, the employee must advise the employer of their absence as soon as possible." That's the entire procedural rule. No window, no expiry, no consent requirement.
The 15 days people keep citing is real, but it belongs to a different leave. Section 81.1 covers the five-day leave for the birth or adoption of a child, and that one does carry a deadline: it "may not be taken more than 15 days after the child arrives at the residence." Somewhere along the way, that condition got copied onto the section next door. It now appears on HR software blogs and payroll guides as though it were law, in at least one case under a heading calling it "the 15-day rule."
Here's what's actually circulating, against what the Act says:
| What you'll read online | What the law says |
|---|---|
| You must take the days within 15 days | No deadline exists. Section 80.2 requires only that you tell your employer as soon as possible. The 15 days belongs to section 81.1, the birth and adoption leave. |
| Splitting the days requires your employer's consent | Sections 80 and 80.1 say nothing about consent. That rule belongs to section 79.7, the 10-day family obligations leave. |
| You need 60 days of service to qualify | There's no minimum. CNESST states the leave applies "regardless of the length of their uninterrupted service." |
| It's 1 paid day and 4 unpaid | That was the rule until the end of 2018. It's been 2 paid and 3 unpaid since January 2019. |
| The suicide of a spouse or child gives you 52 weeks | Section 79.11 says up to 104 weeks. |
| You get an extra day if the funeral is outside Quebec | Not in the Act. |
If your employer is working from one of these, the section numbers above are the fastest way to settle it.
Do you need to have worked there long enough?
No, and this trips up a lot of people who've just started somewhere new.
Quebec attaches no service requirement to bereavement leave. CNESST puts it plainly: all workers may take it "regardless of the length of their uninterrupted service and their employment status (full time, part time, temporary, casual or on call)." Someone hired last Tuesday has the same five days as someone with thirty years in.
This is one of the places Quebec is more generous than the rest of the country. Worth knowing if you've moved provinces recently and are going on what you remember of the rules somewhere else.
What you have to tell your employer, and what you don't
Telling your workplace feels like the part where you might get something wrong. It's the simplest step in this entire guide.
"As soon as possible" is the whole legal requirement
Section 80.2 asks for one thing: tell your employer as soon as you reasonably can. It doesn't specify a format. A phone call works. A text to your manager at 6 a.m. works. You aren't required to give a reason beyond the death itself, and you aren't required to say in advance exactly which days you'll use.
If you're too shaken to make that call, ask someone else to make it for you. Nothing in the Act requires the notice to come from your own mouth.
You don't need a death certificate
This is where families get stuck most often, and the fix is straightforward.
An official death certificate from the Directeur de l'état civil takes roughly two to four weeks to arrive. No employer can reasonably make you wait that long to start a leave the law already gives you. What you'll have within a day or two is an attestation of death, the document your funeral or cremation provider issues confirming the death. That's the piece of paper that unlocks the leave, and it's usually enough for the bank and the insurer as well.
If you want the full sequence of what gets issued when, our complete guide to cremation paperwork in Quebec sets out each document and who signs it.
What an employer can reasonably ask for
Most won't ask for anything. If yours does, an attestation of death, a funeral home notice, or a published obituary all serve the purpose. What an employer can't do is refuse the leave because you haven't produced a document that doesn't exist yet.
Can you split the days, or take one later for the funeral?
Families ask this constantly, usually because the death and the service are two or three weeks apart. The answer has two halves.
The Act is silent on it. Sections 80 and 80.1 don't say the days must run consecutively, and they don't say you may split them. That silence cuts both ways. Nothing forbids you from taking two days now and three at the memorial. Nothing forces your employer to agree either.
Worth knowing: the consent requirement that keeps getting attached to this question isn't imaginary, it's just in a different section. Section 79.7, which governs the separate 10-day leave for family obligations, does say a day may be divided "if the employer consents." Bereavement leave has no equivalent clause.
In practice, most employers say yes when you ask, because the request is reasonable and the alternative is you sitting at your desk on the day of your father's funeral. Ask early, and ask in writing if your workplace is formal about that sort of thing.
Your five days and the cremation timeline
Nobody plans a funeral in five days because five days is enough. You do it in five days because that's what you have, and the arrangements expand to fill whatever you give them.
This is the part worth thinking about before you commit to anything, because the leave is fixed and the arrangements aren't. A traditional funeral typically asks for an in-person arranging meeting, decisions about a casket and a service, a visitation, and the service itself. That's most of a week of your own time, and it's the week the law gave you to be with your family.
Direct cremation is the other end of that scale. The arranging happens by phone, usually in a single call, and there's no viewing or service to schedule. That doesn't mean skipping the goodbye. It means separating it: the cremation happens now, and you hold a memorial a month later, when your family can travel and you can actually be present for it. Many families choose this exact sequence, and it's a legitimate way to do things rather than a shortcut.
At Cleo, that first call is where most of the logistics stop being yours. A real person answers, 24/7, in English or French. The price is fixed and all-inclusive, covering transportation, the cremation, death certificates, and a basic urn, with no hidden fees. The final bill matches the quote you get on day one. You can see what the service includes and what it costs before you call anyone. Arranging the whole thing from another province, without ever coming into an office, is a routine call for us rather than an exception.
If the death happened in the last day or two and you're not sure what comes first, our guide to what to do in the first 24 hours covers the immediate steps.
When the loss is a child, a suicide, or a crime: up to 104 weeks
If you're reading this section, we're sorry. What follows is the law, stated plainly, because that's the useful thing we can offer here.
Quebec provides for far longer job-protected absences in three specific circumstances, all unpaid:
- Up to 104 weeks if your minor child has passed away (section 79.10.1).
- Up to 104 weeks if your spouse, your adult child, your father, your mother, or one of your parents has died by suicide (section 79.11).
- Up to 104 weeks if your spouse or adult child passed away during or as a direct result of a criminal offence (section 79.12).
Section 79.15 sets the boundaries: the absence can't start before the date of the death, and it ends no later than 104 weeks after that date. You can also return to work intermittently or part time during that period, if your employer agrees. That matters for people who find some structure helps, and a full two years away doesn't.
You'll see 52 weeks quoted for these situations on several national round-up articles. That figure is out of date. The Act was amended in 2018 and the number has been 104 weeks since.
Nothing about this has to be decided in your first week. The entitlement exists, and it will still exist in a month.
How bereavement leave in Quebec compares to Ontario and federally regulated jobs
If your family is spread across provinces, or if you're not sure whether provincial rules even apply to your job, the differences are larger than most people expect.
| Where you work | Leave for a death | Paid days | Service needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quebec, Act respecting labour standards ss. 80 and 80.1 | 5 days per death (immediate family), 1 day (extended family) | First 2 | None |
| Ontario, Employment Standards Act, 2000, s. 50.0.2 | 2 days total per calendar year, covering all listed relatives | None | 2 consecutive weeks |
| Federally regulated jobs, Canada Labour Code s. 210 | Up to 10 days per death (immediate family) | First 3 | 3 consecutive months |
The Ontario difference is the one that surprises people. Its two days are per calendar year, not per death. If you lose a parent in March and a grandparent in October, Ontario gives you two unpaid days for the year, total. Quebec's entitlement resets with each death. Ontario also has a separate three-day family responsibility leave (section 50.0.1), but that covers illness and urgent matters, not a death.
Federally regulated work means banks, airlines, telecoms, interprovincial trucking, and the federal public service. If that's you, provincial rules don't apply. You get the more generous federal entitlement instead.
The federal leave is also the one place a real deadline exists. Section 210 allows the days to be taken up to six weeks after the funeral, burial, or memorial service. Six weeks, not fifteen days, and only federally.
If your employer says no
Being told no when you're grieving is a horrible position, and you're on solid ground.
Bereavement leave in Quebec isn't a favour or a company policy. It's a statutory minimum, which means an employment contract can improve on it but can't take it away. An employer who refuses it is not applying their own rules; they're contravening the Act.
Start by pointing them at the sections. A lot of refusals are honest mistakes by a small business owner who's read the same wrong blog post everyone else has, and section 80 usually ends the conversation. If it doesn't, CNESST handles complaints about labour standards, and filing one costs nothing. You have a long window to do it, so this isn't something you have to sort out during the funeral week.
Bereavement leave in Quebec: quick answers
How many days of bereavement leave do you get in Quebec? Five days when your spouse, child, spouse's child, parent, brother, or sister passes away, with the first two paid by your employer. One unpaid day for a grandparent, grandchild, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, or your spouse's parent or sibling.
Is bereavement leave paid in Quebec? The first two days are, at your normal wages. Days three through five are unpaid, and the one-day leave for extended family is unpaid.
Do you get bereavement leave for a grandparent in Quebec? Yes, one day, unpaid, under section 80.1. Your workplace policy may offer more, so it's worth asking rather than assuming.
Do you need a death certificate to take bereavement leave? No. The official certificate takes two to four weeks. The attestation of death from your funeral or cremation provider arrives within a day or two and is what employers accept.
Do you have to take the days within 15 days? No. There's no deadline in Quebec law. The 15-day rule belongs to the birth and adoption leave in section 81.1 and has been misapplied to bereavement leave across a lot of HR content.
How long do you have to have worked somewhere to qualify? No minimum at all. Any length of service, and any employment status, including part time, temporary, casual, and on call.
How many bereavement days do you get in Ontario? Two, unpaid, per calendar year rather than per death, after two consecutive weeks of employment.
Taking the time you're actually owed
Bereavement leave in Quebec is five days, and the first two come with your pay. You don't have to justify taking them, produce a certificate that hasn't been printed yet, or race a deadline that was never in the statute. Telling your employer, in whatever way you can manage today, is the whole requirement.
What fills those five days is the part you have some say over. If the arrangements are the thing standing between you and actually resting during your leave, that's the piece we can take off your plate. One call handles it, and we stay on for months afterward, closing out the paperwork and the government death benefits, long after the ashes come home.
If you're at the very start of this and the leave is only one of a dozen things you're trying to work out, our complete guide to what to do when someone dies in Quebec lays out the whole sequence.
Whenever you're ready, a real person answers, day or night, in English or French.
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