Edmonton Employment Law

 The Financial Post recently ran a Howard Levitt column listing " the 10 biggest mistakes employees make ". Well, not so much. Here's my take.  1. "Thinking HR is your friend, or at least a neutral interlocutor" Okay, so Howard isn't entirely wrong here. In theory, HR is supposed to be a neutral liaison between management and the workforce. In practice, it doesn't always work out that way, particularly in individual matters. When it comes to policy development or other types of organizational reform, general inputs like employee morale will hold more weight. But when it comes to performance management, accommodations, and dismissals, HR is generally going to be the face of management. That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to act in bad faith - sometimes management wants to accommodate, or correct performance deficiencies, in good faith. But it does mean that the employee's interests are secondary to the employer's. Where I disagree...

The Ontario Court of Appeal recently decided that a COVID vaccine case: An employee of VuPoint worked exclusively on contracts for Bell; Bell implemented a vaccine policy; and the employee refused to get vaccinated.  Justice Pollak decided that the contract was "frustrated" by the Bell policy. The Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the decision.  This approach is problematic, with vast implications for employment and other kinds of contracts in various contexts.  In short, frustration of contract contemplates that unforeseeable changes in circumstances (a "supervening event") outside the control of the parties may relieve the parties of their contractual obligations.  The test has three elements: firstly, the supervening event must radically alter the contractual obligations; secondly the supervening event must not be foreseeable or one contemplated by the contract; thirdly the supervening event must be outside the control of the contracting parties.  In this case, ...