Canada Doesn’t Have One Holiday Calendar. Your NUANS Report Shouldn’t Have to Wait.

It is Monday morning and you need a NUANS® report.

But is Monday actually a normal business day everywhere in Canada?

That question is more complicated than it may seem.

Canada does not operate under one universal provincial holiday calendar. Public and general holiday rules differ between provinces, and federally regulated workplaces follow another set of rules.

Ontario has nine public holidays.[1]

Alberta has nine general holidays, while employers may also choose to recognize additional optional holidays.[2]

New Brunswick has eight paid public holidays.[3]

Nova Scotia’s Labour Standards Code provides six paid holidays, while Remembrance Day is governed separately under the province’s Remembrance Day Act.[4]

Federally regulated employees, meanwhile, are entitled to 10 general holidays under the Canada Labour Code.[5]

The differences may look small on a calendar.

For a service that depends on someone being available to manually process an order, however, the calendar can become another operational dependency.

There is no single Canadian holiday calendar

Some holidays are widely recognized across Canada.

Others depend on where a business or employee is located.

Ontario’s nine public holidays are:

• New Year’s Day
• Family Day
• Good Friday
• Victoria Day
• Canada Day
• Labour Day
• Thanksgiving Day
• Christmas Day
• Boxing Day[1]

Alberta also has nine general holidays, but the list is different.

Alberta includes Remembrance Day as a general holiday, while Boxing Day is not one of the province’s nine statutory general holidays. Instead, Alberta lists Boxing Day among the commonly recognized optional holidays that an employer may choose to observe.[2]

The province also lists the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation as a commonly recognized optional holiday rather than one of its nine statutory general holidays.[2]

New Brunswick has another combination.

Its eight paid public holidays are:

• New Year’s Day
• Family Day
• Good Friday
• Canada Day
• New Brunswick Day
• Labour Day
• Remembrance Day
• Christmas Day[3]

That means New Brunswick Day, observed in August, is part of New Brunswick’s paid public holiday calendar, while holidays such as Victoria Day, Thanksgiving Day and Boxing Day are not included among the province’s eight paid public holidays.[3]

Nova Scotia is different again.

Under the Nova Scotia Labour Standards Code, qualifying employees receive six paid holidays:

• New Year’s Day
• Nova Scotia Heritage Day
• Good Friday
• Canada Day
• Labour Day
• Christmas Day[4]

The province specifically notes that days such as Victoria Day and Thanksgiving Day may be commonly recognized but are not paid general holidays under the Labour Standards Code.[6]

Remembrance Day has its own legislation in Nova Scotia, with separate rules governing which businesses may operate and when employees may qualify for another paid day off.[7]

And federally regulated workplaces follow yet another calendar.

The Canada Labour Code provides 10 general holidays, including the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Remembrance Day and Boxing Day.[5]

So even before considering individual employer policies, collective agreements or substitute holidays, there is no single answer to the question:

“Is today a holiday in Canada?”

A holiday does not mean every business is closed

It is important not to overstate what these rules mean.

A statutory or public holiday does not mean that every Canadian business automatically closes.

Ontario’s employment standards rules specifically allow employees in certain circumstances to work on public holidays, with rules governing public holiday pay, premium pay or substitute holidays.[1]

Alberta likewise sets rules for employees who work on general holidays and allows employers to recognize additional holidays.[2]

Federal labour standards also explicitly state that the Canada Labour Code does not prohibit work on a general holiday.[5]

The issue for an online customer is therefore not whether every office is legally required to close.

The more useful question is:

Does the service depend on a particular employee being scheduled and available before the customer’s order can move forward?

If it does, holidays, weekends and office hours can all become part of the fulfillment process.

The hidden calendar dependency in an online service

A website can remain online every day of the year.

That does not necessarily mean the service behind it operates every day of the year.

Imagine placing a NUANS® order online during a long weekend.

The payment page works.

The order form works.

The confirmation email arrives.

But if the next step requires an employee to review the order, access the NUANS system, generate the report and manually email it to the customer, the actual fulfillment process still depends on that employee being available.

That distinction matters.

A website may be available 24/7 while its fulfillment process still follows:

• office hours
• employee schedules
• weekends
• provincial holidays
• federal holidays
• company-specific closures

Normally, waiting until the next working day may not be a major inconvenience.

But if a customer is trying to incorporate a business, reserve a corporate name or complete another time-sensitive filing, an unexpected delay can matter.

The Canadian holiday calendar simply creates more occasions on which that distinction becomes visible.

Different provinces can mean different working days

The provincial differences create another interesting scenario.

A customer and a service provider do not necessarily operate according to the same holiday calendar.

For example, Boxing Day is an Ontario public holiday, while Alberta treats it as an optional holiday rather than one of its nine statutory general holidays.[1][2]

Remembrance Day is a general holiday in Alberta and a paid public holiday in New Brunswick, but it is not one of Ontario’s nine public holidays.[1][2][3]

New Brunswick Day forms part of New Brunswick’s paid holiday calendar but has no equivalent status in Ontario or Alberta.[3]

Nova Scotia has Nova Scotia Heritage Day, while its Labour Standards Code does not treat Victoria Day or Thanksgiving Day as paid general holidays.[4][6]

Federally regulated employees follow a list of 10 general holidays, including the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.[5]

None of this guarantees that one particular office will be open or closed.

It demonstrates something simpler:

“Business day” can depend on whose calendar the service relies on.

For a manually fulfilled online service, the location and schedule of the person processing an order may therefore matter to the customer even when the customer never sees that person.

Long weekends can amplify the difference

A single holiday can also create a multi-day gap in a traditional Monday-to-Friday workflow.

A Monday public holiday, for example, may follow a Saturday and Sunday.

That does not mean every business stops operating for three days.

But a service that normally performs manual fulfillment only during standard weekday office hours could potentially carry an order from one working week into the next.

The same principle applies at Christmas, around New Year’s Day or whenever an employer closes for additional days beyond the statutory minimum.

Again, the issue is not the holiday itself.

The issue is dependency.

If completing a digital order requires a particular person to be working, the customer is indirectly dependent on that person’s calendar.

GetNuans was built without that normal calendar dependency

GetNuans takes a different approach.

Eligible NUANS® orders are processed automatically and reports are delivered electronically, normally within minutes. The automated service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week for eligible Ontario, Alberta, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and federal NUANS® requests.[8]

That means the normal fulfillment workflow does not require an employee to notice an incoming order and manually begin processing it.

An eligible order placed on a Tuesday afternoon follows the automated process.

An eligible order placed late at night follows the same process.

An eligible order placed on a Sunday follows the same process.

And an eligible order placed on a public holiday does not need to wait simply because nobody has been scheduled to manually start it.

For New Brunswick orders, GetNuans also automatically includes the required name search firm cover letter with the NUANS® report at no additional charge.[9]

The advantage is not that holidays somehow disappear.

The advantage is that the normal fulfillment workflow does not need to ask whether today is a working day before it begins.

Automation does not eliminate every dependency

As with any online service, automation does not make GetNuans immune to every interruption.

NUANS® report generation ultimately depends on external systems and infrastructure.

Scheduled NUANS system maintenance, upstream technical outages, telecommunications failures or other exceptional disruptions can still affect processing.

A public holiday could also coincide with maintenance or another external issue.

The important distinction is that an ordinary holiday does not itself require the automated GetNuans workflow to stop.

Automation removes one unnecessary dependency:

the need for a person to be scheduled, available and ready to manually process each eligible order.

A truly online service should not need to check the calendar first

Canada’s holiday system reflects the country itself: national traditions combined with provincial differences.

Ontario has nine public holidays.[1]

Alberta has nine statutory general holidays, plus optional holidays that individual employers may choose to recognize.[2]

New Brunswick has eight paid public holidays.[3]

Nova Scotia’s Labour Standards Code provides six paid holidays, with separate rules for Remembrance Day.[4][7]

Federally regulated employees have 10 general holidays.[5]

Different jurisdictions. Different calendars.

For a traditional workplace, those differences are simply part of doing business in Canada.

For a customer using an automated online service, they do not necessarily need to become part of the fulfillment process.

At GetNuans, we built NUANS® report delivery around a straightforward idea:

An online order should not have to wait for the next business day simply because the normal process requires someone to come back to work.

Eligible orders can continue through the same automated workflow on weekdays, weekends and public holidays whenever the required upstream systems are available.[8]

The calendar may change from province to province.

Your online workflow does not have to.

Need a NUANS® report?

GetNuans is a registered NUANS® member providing official NUANS® reports through authorized member access to the NUANS® system.[10]

Eligible reports are available online for Ontario, Alberta, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and applicable federal requests, with automated electronic delivery normally within minutes.[8]

Choose your jurisdiction and order your NUANS® report online.

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References

[1] Government of Ontario — Public holidays | Your guide to the Employment Standards Act. Ontario lists nine public holidays and explains the rules applying when employees work on a public holiday.

[2] Government of Alberta — Employment standards – Alberta general holidays. Alberta lists nine general holidays and identifies commonly recognized optional holidays including Easter Monday, Heritage Day, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Boxing Day.

[3] Government of New Brunswick — Paid public holidays, vacation time and pay. New Brunswick lists eight paid public holidays, including New Brunswick Day and Remembrance Day.

[4] Government of Nova Scotia — Holiday Pay. The Nova Scotia Labour Standards Code provides six paid holidays for qualifying employees and notes that Remembrance Day is governed separately.

[5] Government of Canada — Annual vacations and general holidays for employees working for federally regulated employers. The Canada Labour Code provides 10 general holidays for federally regulated employees and explains the rules when employees work on those days.

[6] Government of Nova Scotia — Holiday and Retail Closing Day Charts. Lists Nova Scotia’s paid holidays and explains that days including Victoria Day and Thanksgiving Day are not paid general holidays under the Labour Standards Code.

[7] Government of Nova Scotia — Remembrance Day Act Assessment Tool. Explains Nova Scotia’s separate Remembrance Day rules for businesses, organizations and employees.

[8] GetNuans — GetNuans | Instant NUANS® Reports, Delivered 24/7. Describes automated processing, supported jurisdictions and around-the-clock NUANS® report delivery.

[9] GetNuans — Does a New Brunswick NUANS Report Need a Cover Letter?. Describes the name search firm cover letter included with New Brunswick NUANS® report orders.

[10] GetNuans — About GetNuans | Registered NUANS® Member. Describes GetNuans as a registered NUANS® member providing reports through authorized member access.