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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...
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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...
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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”),...
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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...
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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...
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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,...
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Scheming to get rid of a worker costs employer nearly $1 million
Author: Stuart Rudner A recent decision arising out of a case in Prince George, B.C. has made headlines as the case, decided by a jury, resulted in a damages award of about $809,000. Notably, $573,000 of that award were punitive...
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B.C. Court of Appeal Rules Human Rights Tribunal has no Jurisdiction to Hear Law Firm Partner’s Age Discrimination Complaint
John Michael McCormick (“McCormick”) was a lawyer and an equity partner at the Vancouver office of Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP (“Firm”). McCormick worked at the Firm for his entire legal career since 1970 and became an equity partner in 1979....
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Owner’s Occupational Health and Safety Obligations
Owners of commercial or residential property that are engaged in a significant construction project may unwittingly assume health and safety obligations. A recent example of this occurred in British Columbia, where former Premier Gordon Campbell was found by the BC...
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A Mathematical Formula for Calculating a Fair and Reasonable Severance Payment
Author: David Rice Thousands of non-union employees are “laid off”, “downsized”, “let go”, “packaged out” or “early retired” each year. While all of them have contracts of employment – written or partly written and partly oral – very few of...
