Edmonton Employment Law

Here's a dime-a-dozen scenario: Employee gets dismissed without notice.  She sues her employer, but in the mean time, she applies for EI benefits - after all, she needs the cash.  When she settles her wrongful dismissal claim, Service Canada looks at the income as creating an 'overpayment' - she may have to repay some or all of the EI benefits she received. I had assumed that the same would be true of CERB.  Now that I'm looking more closely, I'm not so sure. You probably know that you can't get CERB benefits if you're making more than $1000 in the eligibility period, right?  Well, at the margins, there's always a question of what kind of income gets included in that.  So we look at the definition of 'income' for the purpose of the eligibility exclusion at section 6(1)(b) of the CERB Act ...and it turns out that it's really narrow. they do not receive, in respect of the consecutive days on which they have ceased working, (i)  sub...

The CERB program has its flaws:  There are good argument that it isn't enough and it's underinclusive , and I've written before about how it strips out some of the best features of the well-established EI program (which works, even though it has its own problems). Problems are understandable. This is a complex policy initiative rolled out in a rush, to deal with a crisis. Perfection isn't the standard here, and everyone's largely agreed that something like CERB was necessary to address the pandemic. Andrew Scheer has raised another concern about the implementation of CERB:  The $1000 income cutoff creates a problem for people phasing back into the workplace. CERB eligibility has some pretty rigid criteria, and among them is a requirement that the individual not make more than $1000 in the 4 week eligibility period (there's a different treatment for the initial claim period, though).  For the sake of simplicity, let's call this $250/week.  If you'r...