Edmonton Employment Law

 Here's a question that sometimes comes across my desk: After giving notice of resignation, can employees change their minds and say, "Never mind, I'm not actually quitting after all"? The answer, as anyone accustomed to dealing with lawyers might anticipate, is "It depends." The reality is that there's very little case law on this, but the case law that is there, across Canada, tends toward a conclusion that an employee can rescind a resignation at any time before (a) it is accepted by the employer OR (b) the employer relies on the resignation to its own detriment. Technically, if an employee says "I quit", and the employer responds immediately with "I accept your resignation", it looks like the employment relationship is over - at the employee's instance, meaning that no dismissal liabilities (termination pay, severance pay, pay in lieu of notice, etc.) are typically owed. But employers are generally well-advised to not put too ...

Interesting story from the CBC about the City of Edmonton's naloxone policy . (Full disclosure: The reporter reached out to me to see if I had experience with naloxone policies. I don't, and I declined the media request. But in declining, I did note that it made perfect sense to me that employers who maintain naloxone kits would need policies as to who could administer them.) Naloxone can save lives of people having overdoses, buying time for medical assistance. Naloxone kits are distributed to the public for free. There's no necessary training. No qualification required. By all accounts I've seen, naloxone is safe. Increasingly, businesses are being encouraged to maintain naloxone kits - particularly in high-risk areas like (in Edmonton) downtown or the Whyte Ave area. But everywhere you see discussions of employers maintaining these kits, you're likely to also  see recommendations for training, PPE, and related matters, as a precondition to using the kit. The coro...

 In the wake of huge controversy over, in particular, the Henry VIII aspects of the Alberta Sovereignty Act, the UCP announced certain changes to the bill . I haven't seen the actual text of the amendments to be made. As far as I can tell, they haven't actually tabled the amendments in any way, but are pressing the Bill forward, including motions limiting debate on it, without the amendments, and simply intend to move those amendments at a later stage in the process. But the announcement is pretty specific, indicating section references with wording changes. So I'm going to assume for the moment that this announcement actually captures the amendments they intend to make. In short: while the 'old' s.4(1)(a) allowed Cabinet to change the operation of statutes, the new one changes that to 'regulations'. That makes it a less extraordinary clause; regulations are typically within Cabinet purview to change anyways. Instead of triggering the ASA for any Federal ini...

 There's SO MUCH discussion of what the ASA is and does; I think it might be helpful to walk through the whole thing. (This remains true even though the word is that they'll be changing it.) It's not long. It's a bit complicated. So some of this will be technical. I also won't be going through it in sequence, because legislative drafting doesn't really work that way. Most statutes, including this one, START with a 'definitions' section, but you don't really get the significance of any of them until you start seeing how the terms are used. Best to have a separate window open to the definitions while reading an Act, really. I'll ignore the Preamble because, aside from a few nuanced interpretation questions, that stuff doesn't matter much. The Meat of the Bill Most of the action in this Bill is in sections 3 and 4. Section 3 establishes a 'resolution' process for the legislature to invoke the ASA, and section 4 sets out powers for the Li...

 For over a year, I've been commenting on iterations of the proposed 'Alberta Sovereignty Act' -  the cornerstone of the totalitarian coup that is the Free Alberta Strategy , and  the centerpiece of Danielle Smith's leadership campaign that put her in the Premier's office . All previous commentaries are exclusively reliant on descriptions, for public consumption, of what it is and does. Yesterday, Bill 1 was tabled, and we get to see for ourselves: Does the Alberta Sovereignty Act actually purport to give the Legislature authority to resist Federal exercises of their lawful jurisdiction? Or is it a symbolic waste of ink that empowers the Legislature only to...keep whining? The verdict: While it still doesn't give us clarity of what kinds of actions they're contemplating to try to 'shield' Albertans from Federal laws, it's clear that the operation of this bill is unconstitutional and outrageously anti-democratic. The Basics: Separation and...