Ontario Accident Benefits (SABS), Explained Without the Jargon

What the benefits cover

The core benefit pays for medical and rehabilitation treatment that is reasonable and necessary: physiotherapy, assessments, medication, assistive devices and similar care. If your injuries are serious enough, there is also attendant care to help with personal needs at home.

Other benefits depend on the coverage on your policy. They include income replacement if you cannot work, a benefit for people who were not employed, a caregiver benefit, and housekeeping and home maintenance. Since July 1, 2026 these are optional coverage, which is explained below.

What changed on July 1, 2026

Medical, rehabilitation and attendant care benefits are still mandatory on every Ontario auto policy. Everything else, including income replacement, non-earner, caregiver and housekeeping benefits, became optional. A policy that renewed after July 1 keeps the benefits it already had unless the policyholder agreed in writing to drop or change them.

Two other changes matter after a crash. The optional benefits now only cover the named insured, their spouse and dependants, and the drivers listed on the policy, so a passenger or pedestrian who is not on any policy can still get treatment and care funding but may have no income benefit. And for accidents in Ontario on or after July 1, 2026, your auto insurer pays medical and rehabilitation expenses first, other than medication, even if you also have health benefits through work.

The practical point: find out exactly what coverage your household carries, because it now decides much of what you can claim.

How much it pays

The amount depends on how your injuries are classified. Minor injuries fall under a framework that caps medical and rehabilitation funding at three thousand five hundred dollars. Most other injuries fall into a middle category with a combined medical, rehabilitation and attendant care limit of sixty-five thousand dollars. The most serious injuries can be designated catastrophic, which raises that limit to one million dollars.

Where your policy includes it, the income replacement benefit is seventy percent of your gross weekly income, up to the weekly maximum set by your coverage. The medical funding limits above are why the classification of your injury is one of the most important fights in the whole file.

The deadlines that trip people up

You are expected to notify your insurer of the accident within seven days, or as soon as practicable. Once the insurer sends you the application package, you generally have thirty days to complete and return it. Missing these dates does not always end a claim, but it creates avoidable problems.

The bigger trap is the minor injury label. Insurers default to it because it caps your funding low, and getting out of it usually takes medical evidence. That is the kind of thing worth getting help with early rather than after the funding runs out.