In May of 2017, the Ontario government announced a proposal to eliminate the Ontario Municipal Board. Under the new proposal, disputes with municipal land planning decisions will instead be appealed to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT). The LPAT will…
Higher Standard of Proof in Police Discipline Hearings While the standard of proof in criminal law is to establish facts beyond a reasonable doubt, civil courts and administrative tribunals generally require that claims be proven on a balance of probabilities.…
The Ontario Court of Appeal held in its recent decision of 2260695 Ontario Inc. v. Invecom Associates Limited, 2017 ONCA 70, that Invecom had violated the terms of their agreement of purchase and sale and therefore had to forfeit its…
Supreme Court of Canada upholds common law rule that positive covenants do not run with the land. In the 2016 decision in Heritage Capital Corp. v. Equitable Trust, 2016 SCC 19, the Supreme Court of Canada (‘SCC’) held that Equitable…
In the landmark February 2015 decision, Nissen v. Durham Regional Police, 2015 ONSC 1268 (Nissen), the Ontario Superior Court established a private law duty of care in an informer privilege matter. In its decision, the court awarded $345,000 in general…
The Ontario Court of Appeal (ONCA), in Goldhar v. Haaretz.com, 2016 ONCA 515,recently confirmed that a libel suit over an article written and published in Israel could be heard in Ontario if some of the readership resided in the province.…
In the recent decision Fulawka v. Bank of Nova Scotia, the Divisional Court of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice has certified a class action permitting Scotiabank employees to advance their unpaid overtime claims as a group, rather than on…
The Ontario government has begun the roll-out of the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (“Retirement Pension Plan”), which is intended to provide a predictable source of retirement income for Ontarians. The costs associated with the Retirement Pension Plan may come as…
The Ontario Court of Appeal recently confirmed that the contractual requirement for employees to be “actively employed” to receive their regular bonus payments or other employment benefits is not sufficient to displace an employee’s right to common law damages for…
In August, Justice Belobaba handed down his decision in Johar v. Best Buy Canada Ltd., 2016 ONSC 5287. This judgment serves as a stark reminder to employers: if you assert just cause for terminating an employee when no cause exists,…
The Duty of Good Faith and Workplace Investigations: Joshi v. National Bank of Canada A recent decision of the Ontario Superior Court has indicated that employers may breach their contractual duty of good faith if they fail to provide employees…
Last year, we blogged about the Federal Court of Appeal’s decision in Wilson v. Atomic Energy, 2015 FCA 17, specifically its determination that a dismissal without cause under the Canada Labour Code (“Code”) was not an unjust dismissal pursuant to…
In a recent article, Forbes reported that an American computer programmer, described by his employer as a “model employee,” had secretly outsourced his own job to a company in China. The computer programmer, referred to as “Bob” in the news…
A recent Federal Court of Appeal decision, Bernard v. Canada (Customs and Revenue Agency), 2015 FCA 263, serves as a cautionary tale about the importance of collecting all necessary evidence and putting it before an administrative decision-maker in the first…
Distinguishing at law between a dependent contractor and an independent contractor can be challenging at the best of times. This issue is important to businesses and organizations because, like employees, dependent contractors are owed reasonable notice upon termination, while independent…
In his decision in Khaper v. Air Canada, 2015 FCA 99, Justice Webb states the principle that the duty to accommodate does not survive the termination of employment if the employer legitimately had no knowledge of the employee’s disability at…
The recent termination of a Hydro One employee following an incident at a Toronto FC soccer match earlier this month has been the subject of extensive public debate. The employee, Shawn Simoes, was part of a group of men who…
The Ontario Superior Court’s recent decision in Antunes v. Limen Structures Ltd., is an important caution to employers who embellish the attributes of their company or a particular position when courting future employees. This decision makes clear that the general…
The common employer doctrine allows individuals who have been wrongfully dismissed to extend liability past the employer who technically employs them to the “true” employer who has effective control over the employee. The limits of the common employer doctrine have…
Raymond Giza worked as a bus driver for Sechelt School Bus Service Ltd. (“Sechelt”), and its owner, Randy Gould, for a period of five years. On September 30, 2009, Mr. Giza arrived at work to find a paycheque, a pay…