02: Your Service Canada Account
Today, we’re unlocking another whole bunch of useful information by getting you access to your Service Canada Account.
If you’ve ever been on Employment Insurance because you lost your job, got sick, welcomed a new baby into your life, or took time off work to take care of a loved one, you’ve probably already got a Service Canada Account.
If you don’t, or if it’s been so long since you used it that it’s just a hazy memory now, this episode is for you.
Why is this important?
Quite a bit of the useful information available from Service Canada isn’t inside your account at all, it’s accessible right from the website:
Estimate how much you could receive from Employment Insurance under programs like parental leave, illness, caregiving, or job loss
Estimate how much you could receive from income tested benefits like the GST/HST credit, the Ontario Trillium Benefit, and and the Canada Child Benefit (plus the related provincial and territorial programs)
Get the information you need to apply for disability benefits for yourself or your child
Use the benefits finder to uncover federal and provincial programs that you might be eligible for
Other things you can do in your Service Canada Account include:
Apply for or renew your Canadian Dental Care Plan coverage
Apply for Employment Insurance, check the status of your claim, and download your tax slips
Apply for Canada Pension Plan retirement, disability, or death benefits, check the status of your claim, check your payment amounts, change the amount of tax you have withheld, and see your history of contributions
(normally, it’s down as of July 2025) Apply for Old Age Security, the Guaranteed Income Supplement, , check the status of your application, check your payment amounts, change the amount of tax you have withheld
Get access to your student loan and apprentice loan information
Just like with your CRA Account, you might not need anything from your Service Canada account right now. Consider this my encouragement to make sure you get in before you actually need to because the last thing you want to do if you lose your job or are working on a financial plan and need to estimate how much you’ll get from CPP is wait ten government days to get access.
What can this tell you or your financial planner?
Your Service Canada Account holds planning gold and one of my all time favourite planning resources, your history of contributions to the Canada Pension Plan. I know, I’m a very special nerd. If you’re doing your own planning, or you’ve hired somebody to help you, having access to this account will help you calculate how much you can receive from this program in the future.
Beware the CPP benefit estimate and the Canadian Retirement Income Calculator, though. A little known fact about that estimate is that it makes the (frankly, wild) assumption that from now until age 65 you will contribute the same amount you contributed from age 18 until now.
Set up Access to your Service Canada Account
Just like your CRA Account, your Service Canada Account can be set up for the first time in a few different ways. The set up information included in this episode is current as of July 2025, so make sure to check readysetmoney.ca for the most up to date information in case it changes in the future.
A reminder before you start: make sure you have a secure method of saving and protecting your passwords and use it for this process.
Digital
This is the fastest way to get access to your Service Canada Account. If you bank at one of the big five banks, Vancity, Wealthsimple, Tangerine, Simplii, or one of the credit unions who act as CRA Sign-in partners, you can use your online banking credentials to set up the account, and your cell phone to verify your identity documents.
It takes approximately 10 minutes if you have your SIN and Drivers License handy.
Hybrid
If you’d rather not use your bank account to log in, and are heartily wary of taking a picture of your ID with your phone, you can set up a Service Canada Account and password online (use that password manager to save it, please) and request that a security code gets mailed to you.
Once your code arrives in the mail, sign in to the Service Canada account you set up and use the code to verify your identity.
This process takes ten government days, so mark your calendar for three weeks from when you requested the code to start watching for it in the mail.
Analog
Thankfully, for such a critical portal to all kinds of benefits, there’s a very analog version of the Service Canada Account, and it’s not a phone call (although you can go that route, if you prefer): there’s actual, physical offices located in most parts of the country, and regularly scheduled clinics when a permanent office isn’t available. You can head to the Service Canada site, type in your postal code, and find one - lickety-split.
RESOURCES
Contact Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC)
Create My Service Canada Account - Canada.ca
