Edmonton Employment Law

Over the last decade or two, a weird movement has popped up in Canada (and other countries) of people calling themselves 'freemen on the land', who think they can say a few magic words and have laws and government authority no longer apply to them. (Spoiler alert: They're wrong. This is a hoax that has landed more than a few people behind steel bars.) It's an anti-government group that relies on what we've come to call an "Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument" (OPCA). It has a few cousins - like the detaxer movement that challenges the government's authority to collect taxes, or the primarily American "Sovereign Citizen" movement. I'll give some background on what it is and why it's a scam, first, but ultimately I'll come to a very disturbing point about its principles being invoked to create a quasi-militia within the Ottawa occupation. The Myth The underpinning of freeman theory is a belief that all statutes are contractual...

By default, most employees dismissed on a not-for-cause basis are entitled to 'reasonable notice', by virtue of an 'implied' term of the contract. There's a common law doctrine for figuring out how much that is, but in many cases it can be substantial. So many employers try to limit those employee entitlements by expressly contracting to something different (and usually significantly less) instead. That's allowed. It works. If done properly. (Some management counsel will gripe about how shifting goalposts make it nigh-impossible...which has a grain of truth, but there are ways of dealing with that, too.) However, employment standards legislation sets out guaranteed minimum termination entitlements, and contracting to less than that is not allowed. Across the country, all the employment standards statutes I've reviewed have similar provisions voiding such contractual clauses. (That's also why you can't agree to a wage lower than minimum wage; you can...

With the polarizing protests of the last several days, and some reports of transport companies who have fired truckers who participated in the convoy, it seems a good time to talk about what your employer can do if photos of you show up on social media waving a Confederate flag: Specifically, can you be fired if your employer doesn't like what it sees you doing? Not-For-Cause Termination Let's start with the basics: In most non-union contexts, an employee can be dismissed for almost any reason (or no reason at all), though there's usually a requirement for some amount of 'notice' - typically meaning that your employer might dismiss you immediately but you then have a claim to some amount of money. (The amount can be significant, or not, depending on a number of circumstances.) There are a few improper  reasons to dismiss, as established by statute. For example, it's generally illegal to dismiss someone - on notice or otherwise - because  they became pregnant. Bu...