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AniqueDublin@www.rudnerlaw.ca
NadiaZaman@www.rudnerlaw.ca
StuartRudner@www.rudnerlaw.ca
Ayesha Adamjee
Anique Dublin
Rudner Law
Stuart Rudner
Brittany Taylor
Nadia Zaman

Latest from Rudner Law Blog

Recently, the Supreme Court of Canada denied leave to appeal in Waksdale v Swegon North America Inc (Waksdale), which means that the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision remains the law in Ontario. This decision is critical because it renders the majority of termination clauses in employment contracts unenforceable, leaving employers exposed to significant liability under the common law. The Ontario Court of Appeal held that a termination clause must be looked at in its entirety,…
On Tuesday, as he had forewarned, Premier Ford announced new restrictions in Ontario designed to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The restrictions came into force at midnight on January 14th, and the government released additional details late on January 13th. The details are set out in a Regulation which you can find here. As promised in our January 13th blog post about the announcement, we are providing a summary here. The…
As I wrote in a blog post in the spring of 2019, “in the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, there is no authority to award costs to a successful party, no matter how frivolous the other party’s position may have been. This can have dramatic consequences for how a party will approach litigation and what they may do in order to avoid costs that they know they will never recover, even if they have a…
As Premier Ford forewarned, his government has issued a new state of emergency order along with a plethora of new restrictions designed to stop the spread of COVID-19. These measures come in light of rising case numbers and deaths along with modelling that forecasts 6000 cases per day and a health care system “on the brink of collapse.” Below we have set out some highlights of the announcement. As has been the case since last…
I’ll qualify that statement: performance and merit are not relevant when it comes to assessing your entitlement to notice of dismissal or severance. In fact, they are also irrelevant with respect to whether you can be dismissed at all. Employers can decide who to keep and who to let go, without the need to justify their decisions. This often comes as a surprise to people, but the simple fact is that with the exception of…
Stuart Rudner with another employment law update. So, today I get to use a hockey story for the basis of my comments, and I want to talk about hiring people with disabilities. I’m sure by now we all know, you should never discriminate against someone on the basis of a disability and we all know there is a very strong push for diversity and inclusion but the reality is I still get the comments about…
The holidays are just around the corner. We are in the middle of a pandemic. While there may not be in-person celebrations this year, and many employees are working remotely, employers continue to have obligations to their employees, such as providing a safe workplace to all employees and accommodating employees up to the point of undue hardship. Employers Obligation to Provide a Safe Work Environment The obligation to provide a safe workplace includes providing a…
Your employer insists that you come back to the workplace, and then you test positive for COVID-19. Can you sue the company? What assurances do employers have that they won’t be sued by an employee that becomes infected with the COVID-19 virus at work? Late last month, the Ontario government introduced legislation that should be welcome news to many, as it limits the circumstances in which people can sue where the employer acted reasonably and…
We have frequently been asked what an employer is supposed to do if a staff member does not follow COVID-19 guidelines. We now have an arbitral decision in which summary dismissal was found to be appropriate after a screening officer at Pearson International Airport in Toronto was found to have lied about the fact that she attended at work while awaiting the results of her COVID-19 test. As we regularly remind our clients and readers,…
The CEWS has gone through many evolutions since it was first announced on March 27, 2020. On November 30, 2020, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance released the Fall Economic Statement 2020 which introduces further changes to this crucial support program. Background of the CEWS Originally, the CEWS was designed to provide qualifying employers with a payment of up to 75% of an employee’s qualifying wages (up to a maximum of $847 per…