Edmonton Employment Law

The confirmation hearing of Judge Coney-Barrett has triggered a firestorm of discussion on my Twitter feed about the meaning of the term 'originalism'. My own Twitter feed is more of a counter-narrative - people responding to claims that Canada doesn't subscribe to the American originalist doctrine, essentially arguing that Canada's "living tree" principle is not in opposition to an originalist approach.  (Naming names, I've seen posts to more-or-less this effect by Emmett Macfarlane , Leonid Sirota , Asher Honickman , and Mark Mancini - with some variation between their positions. I've linked relevant Tweets, and I'm genuinely trying to be fair to everyone's position, but if anyone feels I'm misrepresenting your positions or using any straw man arguments here, I invite clarification.) These folks largely have stronger constitutional law credentials than I do, and I don't take issue with the core point being made (particularly by Honic

A year and a day ago, the Supreme Court of Canada heard the appeal in Matthews v. Ocean Nutrition , where Mr. Matthews sought his entitlements under an LTIP, which would have come due during a notional reasonable notice period, notwithstanding that it was a term of the LTIP that he would only receive the benefit if he was actively employed when it vested (the 'forfeiture clause'). The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal, following an Alberta precedent, Styles , had declined to award Mr. Matthews that benefit. In a striking coincidence, a couple weeks before the Supreme Court granted leave to appeal (January 2019), I submitted a paper to the Alberta Law Review setting out a first principles analysis of that very question. My paper leaned heavily on certain interprovincial inconsistencies in the law and a lack of clarity from the Supreme Court on the nature of wrongful dismissal damages, and my initial draft included a footnoted prediction that the Supreme Court likely would and should