No At-Will Employment in Canada

Are you an employer with operations in both Canada & the US? This post is for you.

Contracts vs At-Will Employment

For our US readers, Canada does not have at-will employment. In Canada, employment relationships are governed by employment contracts, either written or implied, and various employment laws and regulations. Employers are generally required to provide reasonable notice or pay in lieu of notice when terminating an employee without cause.

For our Canadian readers, at-will employment is a term used in the United States to describe the employment relationship between an employer and an employee, where either party can terminate the employment at any time, with or without cause, and with or without notice. This means that an employer can fire an employee for any reason or no reason at all, as long as it is not for an illegal reason (such as discrimination). Similarly, an employee can quit their job at any time without providing a reason or notice.Continue Reading No At-Will Employment in Canada

Unlike many other areas of the law, employment and human rights law lets me dig into cultural differences, individual perceptions of reality, and some of the universal truths that unite us all.  I love that just a couple of kilometres/miles south of Toronto, and in fact, just across Lake Ontario, there are often such different expectations in the workplace. 

In the Canadian employment law bootcamps I’ve done for US employers, it is perhaps the assumption that Canadians and Americans share a relatively common culture that gives rise to the interesting reactions when differences do arise.  I’ve blogged about this before (see my FAQs for US Employers in 2011), but want to share some of my more recent observations. 

Continue Reading US versus Canadian Workplaces

While we may share a love of hockey, beer and Justin Bieber, there remains many intangible cultural and legal differences between Canadian and US employment law.  Given the global nature of most of the clients I work with, I frequently advise US employers on the subtle – and sometimes not so subtle – distinctions between