Talk:Public holidays in Canada

Victoria Day

Victoria Day always confuses me. The page says it falls on the Monday before May 25 (May 24 being a good day to fall on seeing as it's the actual birthday of Victoria. Hence the popular expression "May 2-4"), but in 2004 May 24th was a Monday and yet Victoria Day was the week before on May 17. At least, that's how it went in Ontario. Does someone just arbitrarily decide ahead of time if it will be the 3rd or 4th Monday of the month?

St Jean Baptiste

Shouldn't St-Jean Baptiste be renamed to Fête nationale du Québec as it is now officially (I think) called?

Absolutely. It's the official name of the holiday even though people usually don't call it that way. --OmegaDez (talk) 17:17, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Stephen Colbert Day?

March 20th is Stephen Colbert Day in Oshawa, as declared by the mayor.
November 27, 2007

Cleanup

This list is a bit of a mess. Personally, I'd like to see this list limited to those holidays which are actually statutory (federal and provincial), and exclude holidays that are granted only to certain employees through collective agreements, and also exclude whatever an "optional" holiday is, which seems to be just any day that someone might have off. I'd also like to see the list referenced to official government sources and other reliable publications, not the "timeanddate" and "statholidays" websites which are frequently user-submitted and/or just wrong. Any thoughts?

Also, I think that the national day of mourning for the Queen ought to be moved to its own section outside of the lists, since it's a one-time holiday. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 20:43, 14 September 2022 (UTC)

Where are you seeing "holidays that are granted only to certain employees through collective agreements"? And where specifically are the "optional" holidays you are referring to? Could you be more specific so that I can address specifics? I agree that "Timeanddate" and "Statholidays" websites should not be used as sources—are there any specific examples you'd noticed that require better sources?

I'm not sure I agree that the National Day of Mourning for Sept. 19, 2022 should have its "own section", I think it's fine listed with the other federal/provincial statutory days. I'd have the same opinion if any other one-time holiday was enacted for any other event.— Crumpled Fire • contribs • 01:47, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

It's not a statutory holiday the same as the others though, there's no statute associated with it. It was made by proclamation, not legislation, so it can't be statutory. I think having it in this list is confusing people.

Here's a blog post from the law firm Lawson Lundell explaining a bit more and linking to the Orders in Council Proclamation itself: https://www.lawsonlundell.com/labour-and-employment-law-blog/the-national-day-of-mourning-is-it-a-holiday 24.137.102.250 (talk) 13:07, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

What I mean by "optional" is that some of the provincial sections have a subheader for optional holidays, which in most cases are not legally defined at all. I see that the Alberta holidays page actually does list some (different from the ones listed here) and says that if the employer gives the day off then they have to treat it as a stat, but nothing special about those specific days (they're just examples). We have two listed under Manitoba which the legislation specifically says are not paid holidays. And several of the provinces which don't recognize November 11 as a stat have other special rules about working on that day. I removed the "optional" subheader from PEI as it listed days which it seemed the author desired to be holidays but have no recognition in the province at all. And by "granted to employees through collective agreements" I think what's happening is that in several sections we're referencing a list of days that are holidays for provincial government employees (Newfoundland in particular) rather than the list of legal public holidays (Newfoundland in particular - our reference is an out of date version of this list of holidays for government employees instead of this explainer from the Labour Standards Act) - those days could have been negotiated by the public sector unions, although that's not the only possible explanation. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 15:01, 20 September 2022 (UTC)