Errors on Your Pay Stub: What They Mean and How to Fix Them

1. Overtime paid at straight time instead of 1.5×. This is the classic. You worked past the threshold, the extra hours appear on the stub — but they are paid at your ordinary rate, not the legal one-and-a-half times. The 1.5× premium is a statutory floor: s. 174 federally, s. 22 in Ontario, and art. 55 in Québec. If a week of overtime hours is paid flat, you are owed the missing half-rate on every one of those hours.

2. The wrong threshold was used. Overtime only starts at the right weekly line, and the line is not the same everywhere: 40 hours federally and in Québec, 44 hours in Ontario. A federal or Québec employer that only starts counting overtime at 44 hours is quietly deleting four hours of premium every week you cross 40. (The reverse error — treating an Ontario job as if overtime began at 40 — over-reads your entitlement, so confirm your regime before you conclude anything.)

3. Banked lieu time that was never converted to pay. Federally, overtime can be taken as time off in lieu instead of cash, but only under strict conditions — and if that banked time is not actually taken within the applicable period, the employer must pay it out. Under s. 174(4), unpaid banked overtime that goes untaken must be paid at 1.5× within 30 days after the period ends. If your "bank" of hours vanished without a payout, that is a debt, not a courtesy.

4. Holiday premium omitted. A statutory holiday you actually worked can attract a 1.5× premium for the hours worked, separate from your holiday pay — s. 197 federally, and premium pay under s. 24(2) in Ontario. If you worked a general or public holiday and see only your ordinary rate, the premium may be missing.

5. Your effective rate is below minimum wage. Divide gross pay by hours actually worked. That number can never sit below the applicable minimum wage — s. 178 federally, s. 23 in Ontario, and the rate set under N-1.1, r. 3 in Québec. If unpaid overtime has pushed your real hourly rate under the floor, you have a second, independent claim.

Once you have spotted an error, fixing it is a sequence, not a leap. Work up the ladder.

Step 1 — Raise it with payroll or HR, in writing. Most pay errors are resolved here, and a written request costs you nothing while building your file. Set out the pay period, the hours, the correct threshold and rate, and the amount you believe is owed, and ask for a correction. Keep a copy. Our guide on how to ask your employer for unpaid overtime walks through exactly how to word this.

Step 2 — If it is not resolved, file with the regulator for your regime. This is where the deadlines bite, and they differ sharply:

• Federal → Labour Program. The complaint must be filed within six months of the last day the wages were due (s. 251.01), and a payment order can reach back 24 months before the complaint or termination (s. 251.1(1.1)).
• Ontario → Ministry of Labour. An employment standards officer may not order wages that became due more than two years before the complaint was filed (s. 111).
• Québec → CNESST. The prescription is one year from each due date (art. 115) — the shortest of the three, so act early. A CNESST investigation notice can suspend prescription for six months (art. 116).

For the full mechanics of each route, see our companion guide on how far back you can claim. None of these bodies is a "prud'hommes" — that is the French system and it has no equivalent in Canada.

Whatever you do, do not throw away the flawed stub once it is fixed. The uncorrected version is evidence: it shows what happened before you raised it, and it corroborates your own record of hours. The employer is separately bound to keep hour and overtime records — federally under s. 24 of the Canada Labour Standards Regulations, in Ontario under ESA s. 15, and in Québec under Règlement N-1.1, r. 6, art. 1. A gap or contradiction between your stub, your own log, and those statutory records is precisely what supports a claim.

One caveat. Some lines that look like underpayment are not: a night or weekend rate that seems low, for instance, is not a statutory error, because no federal, Ontario, or Québec law fixes a general night or weekend premium — those come only from a collective agreement, decree, or contract. So before you challenge a premium line, check whether the premium exists in your instrument at all. If it does not, the "missing" premium is not owed under the statute. But the overtime, threshold, lieu-time, holiday, and minimum-wage errors above are all grounded in the law — and all recoverable.