Christopher Liew is a CFP® professional and CFA charterholder. He shares insights on personal finance with thousands of Canadian readers at Blueprint Financial.
If you leave Canada for more than a few months, your provincial or territorial health coverage doesn’t come with you.
This is one of the first questions I get from Canadians planning a move or a long winter away.
The rules are different in every province, and the gaps are expensive. Below, I’ll cover when your coverage ends, how to keep it longer, and what to replace it with.
Why this matters now
Every province and territory runs its own health plan, and all of them tie your coverage to actually living there. And it isn’t just retirees heading south. Statistics Canada’s Portrait of Canadian emigration found that in 2021, 67 per cent of Canadians living abroad were between 20 and 44.
How to set CTV News as your preferred source on Google
And the bills are real even inside Canada. As CTV News reported, an Ontario man was charged $12,483 for an air ambulance after a heart attack in Alberta. If that can happen a couple of provinces over, imagine the bill if you’re an ocean away.
- Know your province’s clock before you book the flight
Every province and territory has a limit on how long you can be away and still keep coverage, and they don’t match.
In Ontario, you can keep OHIP for up to two years on an extended absence, but only if you were physically in the province for at least 153 days in each of the two years before you leave, and you have to register at a ServiceOntario centre before you go.
Alberta lets you stay outside Canada for less than six consecutive months without doing anything special, with extended absences of up to 24 months for travel and 48 months for work if you contact the plan first. B.C. allows a 24-month extended absence, but only once every five years, and not if you already used the seven-month vacationer absence that year or the year before.
The pattern I see with clients is that they assume six months or 180 days is the universal rule and plan around it. Check your own province’s or territory’s page, then build the trip around the actual number.
