Edmonton Employment Law

 Two years ago, I wrote an entry on the ONCA decision in Waksdale , finding that a contractual term for 'termination for cause' that offended employment standards legislation had the effect of invalidating the rest  of the termination language, such that an employer could not rely upon the 'not-for-cause' provisions of the agreement. There's a new one, Rahman v. Cannon Design Architecture , dealing with essentially the same question, and coming down the same way. The main difference between the two cases is that, in Waksdale , the parties agreed for the purposes of the appeal that the 'for cause' language was illegal, and the 'not-for-cause' language was not otherwise problematic; in Rahman , the employer argued (and the motions judge accepted) that the 'for cause' language should be interpreted as ESA -compliant because that's how both parties (including a relatively sophisticated plaintiff) would have understood it. So in some ways, thi...

 In September, I posted a summary and critique of the " Free Alberta Strategy Group ". At the time, I thought it was simply a poorly-drafted manifesto for a totalitarian coup, as stupid as it is dangerous. Since then, it hasn't gone away, but has quietly moved through conservative circles with town halls and other promotions - including an interview on Danielle Smith's podcast - but Smith's leadership campaign is giving it new life. And upon further review, I've realized that it's not a joke. It's not as stupid as it is dangerous; it is, in fact, more dangerous. There are holes in it you could drive a truck through - obvious holes that completely undermine its ability to accomplish its stated objectives. In other words, as written, it won't work , and many people look at that as a good enough reason not to take it seriously. It's so obviously unconstitutional that a common reaction by most reasonable people is to dismissively handwave it away. ...

I wrote this some time ago, in response to controversy about a Canadian law student society that significantly promotes originalist thought, but never polished it to the point of publication until now. As American jurisprudence evolves in a way that thinly veils partisan values in a cloak of 'originalism', it's worth discussing what originalism really adds to a discussion of meaning, if not simply acting as a vessel to import anachronistic values into the interpretive exercise. The student society is the "Runnymede Society", and it's an offshoot of the Canadian Constitution Foundation. Both engage in some pretty ideologically loaded exercises. Runnymede's principal participants have a pronounced conservative slant, and they once hosted a debate on the protection of trans rights between...Jordan Peterson and Bruce Pardy. (That's right, on a question where the legal status quo is that trans rights are  protected, and there's a widespread near-consens...