Setting up a business with a WW (unemployment) benefit

The benefit agencies (previously known as the industrial insurance boards) make a distinction between two phases:

• The orientation phaseYou collect information about the opportunities for setting up your own business. In this phase you must be available for work. In most cases you can carry out these activities without losing your unemployment benefits. It is important to tell your benefits agency what you are doing . 
• The phase in which you actually start your businessYou work for yourself and are therefore no longer available for other work. Your unemployment benefit is stopped. You are no longer considered as an employee.