Appealing an Employment Insurance decision to the General Division

Employment Insurance (EI) appeals to the Social Security Tribunal (SST) start at the General Division, in its Employment Insurance Section. At this level of appeal, you can submit additional evidence to support your appeal; however, additional documents must normally be filed on or before a certain date which will be communicated to you. For information about how to start your appeal, please go to the How to appeal section of this Web site.

When a complete Notice of Appeal form has been filed, the SST will send a copy of the Notice to the Canada Employment Insurance Commission (CEIC) and ask it to send the SST a copy of your file. Your file contains all the information the CEIC used to make its initial and reconsideration decisions on your application. The SST will send you a copy of this file for you to review.

Summary dismissal

An SST Tribunal Member will review the CEIC’s file as well as your Notice of Appeal form and any other information you have provided. The Tribunal Member must, by law, summarily dismiss the appeal if, in the Member’s view, the appeal has no reasonable chance of success. However, before doing so, the Tribunal Member must notify you in writing of the intention to summarily dismiss the appeal. This will give you an opportunity to provide additional information and make a case to continue with the appeal. A Tribunal Member will review this information and decide if your appeal should proceed or should be dismissed. If it is dismissed, the Tribunal Member sends you the decision in writing.

Decisions to summarily dismiss can be appealed to the Appeal Division using the Application to Appeal to the Appeal Division form (PDF format).

Organizing a hearing

Should your appeal go forward, the Tribunal Member will determine if a decision will be made on the record or if a hearing will take place.

A decision on the record means the Tribunal Member will decide based on the documents and submissions that were filed.

The types of hearings, available to see in our policies section, are:

  • by written questions from the Tribunal Member. The member will ask you and/or the CEIC questions in writing to which a written response is required;
  • a hearing by telephone;
  • a hearing by videoconference; or
  • an in-person hearing

Regardless of the type of hearing you can participate in the official language of your choice. For information about the use of other languages during the appeals process please see our policies section.

The SST will write you to tell you the type of hearing the Tribunal Member has decided to use. The SST will call or write to you to schedule the hearing. If your hearing is by written questions and answers, the SST will give you the date for providing the answers to the Tribunal Member. Following the hearing, the SST Member will issue a decision and the SST will send you a copy of that decision.

Re-opening a decision

You can use the Application to Rescind or Amend form (PDF format) to apply to the General Division and ask that it review its decision only if new facts come to light that were in existence but were not known before the hearing or before the decision was made. This application can be made only once and must be submitted within one year of the decision being made.

Next step

If you disagree with the decision made by the General Division, you can appeal to the second level of appeal at the SST, the Appeal Division.