Ontario Seniors & Retirees: Auto Insurance Changes You Must Know

If you are retired, the two accident benefits your July 2026 renewal decision should turn on are the non-earner benefit and housekeeping and home maintenance — not income replacement, the benefit that gets the most attention but replaces employment income, which is exactly what a pension or an annuity is not. Most explanations of Ontario's reform are written for someone with a job to lose; this one reads it from a retired household's side.

TopRates.ca is educational. Quotes are not offered or arranged on this site today. Nothing here is advice for your situation — it's the plain-English background to bring to a licensed insurance professional.

Ontario Regulation 383/24 amended the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule so that, for policies entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2026, only three benefits stay mandatory: medical, rehabilitation and attendant care. Everything else — including the non-earner benefit, housekeeping and home maintenance, caregiver benefits, income replacement, and death and funeral benefits — became optional.

Attendant care staying mandatory is the good news in that sentence, and it is worth naming: help with the activities of daily living remains in every policy, at limits the reform did not touch — $3,500 for most minor injuries, $65,000 for serious non-catastrophic injuries, and $1,000,000 where an injury is designated a catastrophic impairment, in each case shared with medical and rehabilitation.

And nothing disappears on its own. A renewing policy carries its existing benefits forward as optional coverage in the same amounts unless they are declined or reduced in writing. A policy written fresh starts at the mandatory minimum.

Income replacement pays 70% of gross income up to $400 per week, with optional tiers of $600, $800 and $1,000. It replaces employment income — which is exactly what a pension, an annuity or a registered withdrawal is not. Those keep arriving after a collision, so there is nothing for this benefit to step into.

The exception is real and common: plenty of retired people still consult, do seasonal work, or run something part-time. If earned income is part of your household's arithmetic, this benefit is back on the table, and the question is the ordinary one — what would stop arriving, and for how long.

This is the benefit built for people with no paycheque to replace. It pays $185 per week where an injury causes a complete inability to carry on a normal life, and it has two boundaries worth knowing before you weigh it: a four-week waiting period before it starts, and a maximum of 104 weeks.

Read the threshold carefully, because it is stricter than it sounds. The Schedule's test is a “complete inability to carry on a normal life,” which section 3(7)(a) defines as an impairment that continuously prevents a person from engaging in substantially all of the activities they ordinarily engaged in before the accident. That is a high bar, not a synonym for being badly hurt or slow to recover. This benefit is not a general income top-up for an injured retiree; it is aimed at a serious and sustained change in how a person is able to live.

Housekeeping and home maintenance pays up to $100 per week toward household tasks an injured person can no longer do. For a retired household that number is not abstract — it is the snow, the lawn, the stairs, the groceries, the things that were being managed personally and now have to be bought.

Here is the part that changed on July 1, 2026. Before the reform, the standard version of this benefit applied only where an injury was designated a catastrophic impairment, and extending it to all injuries was an optional buy-up. For policies entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2026, FSRA's guidance to insurers describes "all impairments" as the legislated standard. So a broken hip that keeps someone off their feet for four months — serious, disruptive, expensive, and not catastrophic in the schedule's sense — is within the standard coverage, provided the benefit itself is on the policy.

That is the single most useful thing to check on a renewal package: whether housekeeping is on the policy at all, and, if you are renewing a policy that carried the old catastrophic-only version, whether it has been kept at that level or moved to the all-impairment standard. FSRA describes three choices for a renewing customer: keep the same level of coverage, choose the new standard that applies to all impairments, or decline the coverage. Nothing changes unless you and your insurer agree to it in writing.

The caregiver benefit pays $250 per week for the first person in need of care and $50 for each additional person, and it is triggered by the carer being injured — not the person receiving care. Retired people are frequently the carer in a family: for a spouse, for a parent, for grandchildren on fixed days each week.

It follows the same rule as housekeeping: for policies entered into or renewed on or after July 1, 2026, the legislated standard applies to all impairments. If care you provide is load-bearing for someone else's week, this is a benefit to look at on its own terms rather than as a line item to trim.

Indexation adjusts weekly benefit amounts for inflation. It was already optional before the reform and remains so, which is why it rarely comes up — but it interacts with the benefits above more than most people notice. A non-earner benefit can run up to 104 weeks; housekeeping can run a long time as well. A weekly figure fixed at the outset is worth less at the end of a two-year claim than at the start.

Worth asking what indexation costs, given you are more likely than most policyholders to be claiming the long-duration benefits it applies to.

The reform narrowed who optional benefits cover to four groups: the named insured, their spouse, their dependants, and the drivers listed on the policy. Everyone else injured in an accident still receives the mandatory medical, rehabilitation and attendant care benefits — but not the optional ones.

The household version of that: an adult child who drives you to appointments, a neighbour who takes the car to the shop, a visiting relative borrowing it for a week. Familiarity is not listing. If someone drives your vehicle with any regularity, the question at renewal is whether their name is on the policy, and it is a question with a documentary answer.

Also newly optional: $25,000 to a surviving spouse, $10,000 per dependant, and up to $6,000 toward a funeral, with higher optional amounts available. These are small numbers against the cost of the events they attach to, and they are usually a small line on a premium. Whether that trade is worth making is a household judgement rather than a technical one — but it should be made deliberately, not by letting a form default.

Ask for the declarations page rather than a verbal summary, and read which optional benefits are actually on it.

For housekeeping and caregiver, confirm the benefit is on the policy and at which level: the all-impairment standard, or, on a renewing policy, the older catastrophic-only version carried forward.

Ask what the non-earner benefit and indexation each cost to keep.

List every person who drives the vehicle with any regularity, and check each one against the policy.

If either spouse still earns, ask whether income replacement is worth carrying and at which tier.

For the premium side of a retired household's policy, see our car insurance for seniors page.