Ontario Human Rights Commission Releases “Minds that Matter” Report on Human Rights, Mental Health and Addictions
On September 13, 2012, the Ontario Human Rights Commission released “Minds that Matter: Report on the consultation on human rights, mental health and addictions”. The Report compiled the findings of a province-wide consultation on human rights issues experienced by persons...
QUÉBEC COURT OF APPEAL: No duty to disclose unfounded allegations of dishonest conduct to potential employer
Author: Marie-Pier Côté In a very interesting and unanimous decision[1], the Québec Court of Appeal has recently ruled that an employee faced with unfounded allegations of embezzlement does not have to disclose such accusations to a potential employer during the...
Just One Week Left to Post the New Mandatory Health and Safety Awareness Poster
In response to the recommendations of an Expert Advisory panel commissioned to review Ontario’s occupational health and safety system, the Ministry of Labour published a new workplace poster titled “Health & Safety at Work – Prevention Starts Here” on June...
Mandatory WSIB Coverage in the Construction Industry Coming into Effect on January 1st, 2013
Effective January 1, 2013, nearly everyone who works in the construction industry must have Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (“WSIB”) coverage. While the law already requires employers to cover their workers, mandatory coverage will now extend to independent operators, sole...
Scents and Sensitivities
Employers often face a variety of complaints from employees about health concerns due to individual conditions. One Ontario employer recently faced a Human Rights complaint for its failure to eliminate all scents from the workplace in the case of Kovios...
Are Equity Partners Employees? Mandatory Retirement in Law Firms
For some time now, it has been a settled principle of human rights law that employers cannot force employees to retire unless the age of an employee amounts to a bona fide occupational requirement. While mandatory retirement used to be...
Express/Written Restrictive Covenants For Key Employees More Important Than Ever
A recent Supreme Court of Canada decision has considered the question of who is a “fiduciary”, making it an important one from the perspective of employment law. In Alberta v. Elder Advocates of Alberta Society 2011 SCC 24 (“Elder Advocates”),...
An Eye on Collective Bargaining and the Taxpayer, Part II: Back to School?
On March 13, 2012, we took a look the various pressures facing government spending and how deficit/debt cutting could impact broader public sector employees. And the taxpayer, of course. As a refresher, some of the public sector “wage” issues that...
Record Setting Fines in the Ontario 2009 Metron Christmas Eve OHS Fatalities
In June 2012 we published a Labour and Employment Communique – Alberta regarding guilty pleas that were entered in two precedent setting occupational health and safety prosecutions arising out of the same tragic incident, which had the potential of record...
Muddy Waters – Privacy in the Workplace
With the rapid rate of technological change, an employee’s expectation of privacy while using employer owned technology is an important issue to be considered. The Alberta Court of Appeal case of Poliquin v. Devon Canada Corporation ruled that the Plaintiff, Mr. Poliquin,...
