News & Events

In Canadian Elevator Industry Welfare Trust Fund v Skinner, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal considered what constituted discrimination in the denial of access to coverage for medicinal marijuana, emphasizing the deference that courts and tribunals will give to the administrator of a benefit plan in choosing what drugs the plan will cover. The case

The issue of what a court will do when faced with a claim for variable compensation in the form of a Carried Interest Plan, much like a profit sharing plan, in which profit was recognized some 3-7 years following the initial investment, came before the Honourable Mr. Justice Monahan recently. In a decision released in

Effective April 1, 2018, the equal pay amendments to the Employment Standards Act (“ESA“) flowing from the Bill 148 Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act officially came into force in Ontario. These equal pay provisions prohibit any employer paying different rates of pay to employees because of a difference in employment status (eg. full-time, part-time and/or

For decades, the Ontario Labour Relations Board has considered only the wishes of those persons employed in the bargaining unit on the date of application in construction industry proceedings. “Steady eddies”, disabled employees, and others who are absent from work on the date of application for any number of reasons are thereby excluded from the

Recent amendments to the Ontario Labour Relations Act, added after the passage of Bill 148, have created a new tool for trade unions to assist with their organizing campaigns.  Unions can now make an application to the Labour Relations Board for an order requiring an employer to provide a list of its employees to the

The 2018 Federal Budget was released on February 27, 2018, and amongst other things, included a major and somewhat surprising announcement regarding the phase out of the CRA’s Health and Welfare Trust Policy, which has governed health and welfare trusts (HWTs) since 1966. The announcement was included in the Tax Measures: Supplementary Information document released

In Heller v. Uber Technologies Inc., 2018 ONSC 718, Perell J. stayed a proposed class action on behalf of Uber drivers due to a clause in the parties’ Service Agreement that mandated they resolve disputes by arbitration in The Netherlands. In upholding the arbitration clause, the Court followed the precedent set by the Supreme Court

The British Columbia Court of Appeal, in a decision released this past summer, took the opportunity to remind employers that precision in drafting restrictive covenants (those of non-competition in particular) is a necessity. In this particular case, an optical company operating retail stores and eye examination clinics had a non-competition covenant within contracts with its

On November 11, 2017, the Tax Court of Canada released Scott v. The Queen, 2017 TCC 224 (CanLII), a precedent setting decision regarding the taxation of payments made in relation to the termination of employment benefits in the context of the Nortel insolvency.  The Tax Court “overruled”, in part, an Advanced Tax Ruling issued by

On December 15, 2017 the Supreme Court of Canada (“Supreme Court”) delivered a significant decision in the area of human rights law. According to the Supreme Court, employers are not the only ones who are prohibited from committing discriminatory harassment against employees. British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal v. Schrenk concerned claims of discrimination in the