Filing an Unpaid-Wages Complaint With the Federal Labour Program

This is the gate. The federal complaint route is open only to employees of federally regulated employers — federal undertakings such as banks, interprovincial and international air, rail, road and marine transport, telecommunications, broadcasting, the postal service, and similar federal works. That's roughly a small minority of the Canadian workforce; the vast majority of employees are provincially regulated and must use their province's regime instead.

Get this wrong and you file in the wrong place, under the wrong threshold, with the wrong deadline. If you're not certain whether your employer is federal or provincial, resolve that question before doing anything else — our complete guide to claiming unpaid wages covers how to tell. The rest of this article assumes you have confirmed federal jurisdiction.

Under the Canada Labour Code, standard hours are 8 hours in a day and 40 hours in a week (s. 169). Work beyond that is overtime, and overtime must be paid at not less than one and one-half times the regular rate of wages (s. 174). So before you file, quantify the claim: identify every hour worked over 8 in a day or 40 in a week that was not paid at 1.5× (and was not properly taken as time off in lieu), and total it.

That total is the number your complaint puts in front of the Labour Program. It rests entirely on your hours, which is why the evidence step below matters so much.

Here is the parameter most people miss. A complaint of non-payment of wages must be filed within six months — specifically, under s. 251.01(2), "six months from the last day on which the employer was required to pay those wages or other amounts." The clock runs from when the wages should have been paid, not from when you noticed the shortfall.

There is a safety valve: the Head — the delegate of the Minister who administers Part III — may extend that period in defined circumstances (s. 251.01(3)). But you should never plan around an extension. Treat six months as a hard deadline and file well inside it.

The filing deadline and the recovery depth are two different things, and confusing them costs money. Even after you file on time, a payment order cannot reach back forever. Under s. 251.1(1.1), a payment order must not relate to wages for the period preceding:

• (a) the 24 months (plus any extension of the complaint period granted by the Head under s. 251.01(3)) immediately before the day the complaint was made — or, if your employment ended before you complained, the 24 months immediately before the date of termination; or
• (b) in an inspection-based case, the 24 months immediately before the day the inspection began.

So the picture is: you must complain within six months, and once you do, the order can recover up to 24 months of unpaid wages counted back from your complaint (or your termination, if earlier). The deeper your history of underpayment, the more this 24-month ceiling shapes your total — see our companion piece on how far back you can claim.

Federally, there is no provincial officer and no labour board hearing your wage complaint in the first instance. The decision-maker is the Head (a delegate of the Minister of Labour, historically an inspector), who investigates and can issue a payment order requiring the employer to pay the wages owed. Understanding who decides helps you frame your complaint: it is an administrative process run by the Labour Program, not a court action.

Your claim lives or dies on hours. Assemble your own dated log of the hours you actually worked, plus payslips, schedules, messages and any login or access records. Then remember that your employer has its own legal recordkeeping duty you can lean on.

Under section 24 of the Canada Labour Standards Regulations, a federally regulated employer must keep, for at least three years (36 months) after the work is performed, records including the hours worked each day, the rate of wages, and the actual earnings, indicating the amounts paid as overtime pay. Those records are exactly the ledger that either confirms or contradicts your claim — request them as part of your file.

1. Confirm federal jurisdiction — your employer is a federal undertaking (bank, air/rail/road/marine interprovincial transport, telecom, broadcasting, postal, etc.).
2. Quantify the claim — hours over 8/day or 40/week (s. 169) that were unpaid at 1.5× the regular rate (s. 174).
3. Assemble proof — your own dated hours log, payslips, and a request for the employer's s. 24 records (hours per day and overtime paid, kept 36 months).
4. File within six months — from the last day the wages were required to be paid (s. 251.01(2)); the Head may extend (s. 251.01(3)), but don't count on it.
5. Understand the ceiling — a payment order reaches back up to 24 months before your complaint or termination (s. 251.1(1.1)).