Will my sick days carry over to the new owner, or do I start from zero?

If your employment is treated as continuing through the sale — the usual outcome when a new owner takes over an operating business and keeps its staff — your years of service carry forward rather than resetting, and that service history is what many leave-related entitlements are built on. Ontario's Employment Standards Act, 2000 doesn't guarantee a bank of paid "sick days" the way some workplace policies do; it sets out job-protected unpaid leave entitlements, and separately, many employers offer their own paid sick-day policies as a matter of contract or workplace practice rather than statutory right.

Whether a specific paid-sick-day allowance carries over exactly as it existed with the old employer depends on whether the new owner adopts the seller's existing policies or introduces its own. What should carry over is your underlying service date, which matters for any entitlement tied to length of service, statutory or otherwise.

If your new employer's sick-day policy looks different from what you had before, ask specifically whether it's treating your start date as continuous, and get the new policy in writing so you know exactly what you're working with going forward.