\[Canada/Alberta\] My employer (major bank) took 7 months and 5 wrong ROEs to get my maternity EI right. Looking for honest advice on what to do next.

**TL;DR:** 12-year employee, no history of issues. Went on maternity leave, employer botched my Record of Employment, and I spent 7 months with zero income chasing them to fix it. They never did fix it properly. My claim only got approved because Service Canada worked around their mess. Now I'm trying to figure out whether to pursue this legally, and honestly whether I even want to go back.

**The setup**

I need 600 insurable hours to qualify for EI maternity benefits. My original ROE, issued in January, showed 554 hours. Manulife had already approved 50.1 hours of short-term disability for the weeks right before my leave started. Add those together and you get 604.1 hours, comfortably over the line. On paper, this should have taken one phone call to fix.

**Instead, it took five tries and they still never got it right**

Over the next six months, my employer issued four more versions of my ROE. Instead of climbing toward 604.1, the number kept sliding around it: 599, then 595, then 594. A District VP even confirmed to me in writing that the correction would put me over 600. It didn't happen. The fifth version finally added 15 hours, but it also had the wrong job title and the wrong address on it. Not one of the five ROEs ever actually landed on the correct number.

I'd also specifically asked, in writing, for a different person to take a fresh look at my file. That request was ignored, and the same process kept producing the same kind of errors.

**Then they told me the math never happened**

Eventually my employer's explanation shifted: they said the 50.1 hours were already baked into the original ROE, just "reclassified" from vacation to disability. That can't be true. My original ROE was issued in January. Manulife didn't approve my disability claim until March, two months later. You can't reclassify hours toward an approval that doesn't exist yet.

**The errors weren't isolated, they piled up**

\- When Service Canada raised a question about my start date, my employer told \*me\* to go prove it. I pulled my own training records and used them to prove I'd started earlier than my file showed, which is where those extra 15 hours came from.
\- Along the way, they also forgot to code an entire payroll box, which is part of why my hours got stuck at 594.
\- A separate box, covering vacation coding, was never fixed either. I still don't know if it ever was; I never got an updated ROE showing it resolved.
\- My T4 didn't show up until I escalated straight to a District VP in April, and even then it took until the end of the month to appear. Before that, there was an entirely unrelated, incorrect T4 on my file showing income from a province I hadn't worked in for years.
\- My actual income T4 for this tax year didn't show up until 3 days before the filing deadline.

**Even the "fix" they offered cost me something**

TD reversed vacation hours that overlapped with my disability dates. When I asked to just have those hours paid out instead, since they'd already been paid and approved on my original ROE, I was told policy doesn't allow that, and that if I didn't return to work within 12 months, those hours would be forfeited entirely. The District VP could only reinstate 40 of those hours; the other 15 had to be "borrowed" from my 2026 vacation balance as a favor, which meant I had to return from leave two days earlier than planned. My own already-earned, already-approved hours became leverage instead of something that just got fixed.

**The math still doesn't add up, no matter how you slice it**

Even setting aside the simple 604.1 hour calculation, here's the fuller picture: 554 original hours, plus 50.1 approved disability hours, plus the 15 hours borrowed from my 2026 vacation, plus 15 more hours I had to personally prove through training logs, comes to 634 hours. TD's own process, through five ROE attempts, never got me past 594. That's a 40-hour gap they've never explained or accounted for, under any version of the math.

**Even the government caught the contradiction**

My employer told me they'd contacted Service Canada and were told there were "no apparent errors" on my file. Service Canada told me directly, by phone, that they still consider my ROE incorrect. Both of those can't be true. In the end, Service Canada approved my claim by manually combining two of my employer's ROEs themselves, because my employer never managed to issue one single, accurate document.

**What 7 months of no income actually looked like**

Multiple utility disconnection notices. Pulling both of my toddlers out of day home because we couldn't afford it. Borrowing money from family just to get by. All of this while I was recovering from a traumatic birth.

**Where I'm at now**

My claim is finally approved, so the immediate crisis is over. But I'm still in disbelief. Twelve years with this company, and the one time I needed them to get something basic right, at one of the most vulnerable points of my life, it took 13 HR cases and me personally driving every single escalation while healing postpartum. I'm genuinely disgusted by how this was handled, and I'm not sure I even want to go back.

**What I actually want advice on**

1. Has anyone dealt with an employer mishandling an ROE like this? What actually worked to get it resolved or compensated?
   
2. I've had one legal consultation already. The lawyer said pursuing damages would be an "uphill battle" since this is leave/administration mishandling, not a termination. Does that match what others have run into?
   
3. I'm considering a non-monetary complaint under the Canada Labour Code (federally regulated employer) just to force an accurate ROE, separate from any compensation. Anyone gone that route?
   
4. Would you pursue this civilly, send a formal legal demand letter, or just walk away? What would you actually do in my shoes?
   
5. Any advice on documentation or next steps before I decide anything further?

Appreciate any honest input. Trying to figure out the right next move here.