Articles

A recent decision of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, Aitchison v L&L Painting and Decorating Ltd, 2018 HRTO 238, confirmed that employees do not have an absolute right to smoke marijuana, medical or otherwise, in the workplace. The Tribunal held that the employer’s “zero tolerance” policy was not discriminatory, as it did not impose automatic termination of employment for violations of the policy. Employers are advised to revisit drug and alcohol policies to ensure that any “zero tolerance” type polices do not lead to automatic termination of employment without any flexibility with respect to requests for accommodation. Further, in light of the pending legalization of recreational marijuana use in Ontario, such policies should be amended to contemplate recreational use of legal substances.

Effective January 1, 2018, the Ontario Employment Standards Act, 2000 (the “ESA”), was amended to require employers to provide pay for two of the ten personal emergency leave days available to employees, and to make personal emergency leave available to all employees. The introduction of paid personal emergency leave created uncertainty for employers whose existing collective agreements or individual contracts of employment provided employees with some form of income protection for illness or other types of personal emergencies.
In United Steel Workers, Local 2020 and Bristol Machine Works Ltd, a labour arbitrator found that employees were not entitled to claim an additional two paid personal emergency leave days in the circumstances, as the collective agreement provided the employees with a greater right or benefit than the ESA.

In June 2016, Dirk Plate was convicted of fraud in a multi-million dollar overbilling scheme involving his employer, Atlas Copco Canada. Inc. Mr. Plate was sentenced to five years in prison for his involvement in the scheme, which involved the misappropriation of funds from Mr. Plate’s employer through the use of false advances of bonuses, approvals of illegitimate expense reimbursements and inflated and/or false invoices. In March 2018, a Toronto judge ruled in favour of Mr. Plate’s former employer in a civil action against Mr. Plate, the former General Manager (and later, Vice-President) of the Construction and Mining division at the company’s Sudbury, Ontario office. The Court found that Mr. Plate had been a fiduciary of the company, and that he had breached that duty when he became aware of the fraud scheme, benefitted from it and allowed it to continue. Accordingly, Mr. Plate was found liable for all damages incurred by the company during the period that Mr. Plate was aware of the fraudulent scheme, a sum of $20 million.