When your employer ends your employment, they are legally required to pay you, at the very least, the amounts set out in your province’s employment standards legislation. Your written employment contract may say one of two things: it may set out a prescribed period of time that the company will continue paying you (either just those legal minimum periods, or often something longer than that), wherein you can keep earning income under the employment contract that you both signed. The other option, if your contract says nothing or you do not have a written contract, is that your employer then owes you ‘reasonable notice’- which is a rough estimate of how long it might reasonably take you to find a new job.
For your employer’s part though, they are not responsible for paying you out forever. They are only obligated to keep you whole until you can reasonably be expected to find comparable work, at a comparable wage to what you were earning before. If you find something sooner, they may have a provision within your severance package that states that you must let them know, and are then only eligible to earn 50% of whatever amount is remaining. If you still cannot find something within what the law considers a reasonable period of time, then your best recourse is likely Employment Insurance while you continue your search.
