Edmonton Employment Law

 I've posted before about the Free Alberta Strategy , and again when Danielle Smith adopted parts of it into her platform . In those posts, I made the argument that the FAS as written is ineffective, without additional implied  steps that would allow the Provincial government to wield its proposed new 'police' in a way that backs their agenda, without regard for law, leading inexorably to an armed conflict between this paramilitary group and Federal law enforcement. It's time for an update, because this is no longer implicit in Smith's plan, but quite explicit. In the last week or so, Smith has backed Saskatchewan Premier Moe's allegations of Federal government employees 'trespassing' on private land to test water quality ; she's indicated that the point of creating a Provincial police service is to be able to dictate which laws they enforce or not ; she's said that the ASA will be used to block Federal law officers from enforcing Federal law ; a...

Last year, there was a wrongful dismissal decision out of Calgary. My initial assessment was that it was quite a good decision, and people who follow me know that I'm generally pretty critical about wrongful dismissal decisions. But the more I think about it, the more I think it touches on some of the more problematic aspects of employment law. This is the decision that really prompted me to start writing my Constructive Dismissal series. More recently, the Alberta Court of Appeal heard the appeal of this decision, and made things SO MUCH WORSE. The case is Kosteckyj v. Paramount Resources Ltd. , and it dealt with an employee who - at the start of the pandemic - had her compensation reduced significantly, before she was dismissed three weeks later. This is not an uncommon story. Lots of employers went through tiers of reductions as the scope of the pandemic's impact became clear. Pay cuts, more pay cuts, reduced hours, temporary layoffs, permanent layoffs. I wouldn't sugges...