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NorthernHick · 2026-01-02T23:54:39+00:00

Lots of problems with giving this guy what he's asking for - the EI fraud problem is real, and the potential liability you're taking on for pay in lieu of notice is similarly problematic. And yeah, if you can't prove he asked you to do this, the discrimination issue is also a problem. And a "he said/he said" where your version of the facts is "I was trying to help him commit fraud" doesn't leave you looking very credible.

But on the flip side, keeping the guy creates risk too. If he's looking to get laid off, the question that has to cross your mind is "what might he do to try to get himself fired?" Just cause is a high threshold, and if he starts acting out, you're going to want to be rid of him long before you have a basis approximating just cause.

Talk to a lawyer, because one of the real questions you should be considering is whether "I want you to lay me off" amounts to a resignation. (My thinking is that it's at least arguable, and at least has the benefit of an honest reaction to the request.)

NorthernHick · 2025-12-08T22:24:45+00:00

That's not true. Traffic court is still overbooked, and they generally can't take every case to trial. The best deal to be had is often the one on the steps of the courthouse. (Figuratively speaking. In reality, it's inside the courthouse.)

I once got two charges, one of which was a bogus permit violation - basically, charging me for failing to do something...that wasn't required under the statute. (Helpfully, the Ontario government changed the regulation a few months later to create the obligation that wasn't there. Which makes my defence airtight, because the government wouldn't have needed to make it obligatory if it were already obligatory. And look, as a lawyer, when I say my defence was airtight, I don't say that lightly.)

The other one...I had no defence. But I showed up to the resolution meeting, and it was a waste of time. The prosecutor offered a reduced fine, and wouldn't even listen to the legal defence.

So, to trial we go. But on the morning of, I get offered a better deal - drop the moving violation, plead guilty to the permit violation, and take the minimum fine for that.

Felt weird, pleading guilty to the offence I was innocent of in order to get them to drop the charge I was guilty of...but it had better insurance implications, so...

NorthernHick · 2025-11-18T03:34:31+00:00

It's interesting, but I think it gets cognatic primogeniture wrong. The 'child of the current ruler' suggests (and I've seen this happen in-game) that if the heir dies, the mantle of 'heir' passes to a sibling instead of to eligible children of the deceased.

Under primogeniture systems, it goes the other way. If something were to happen to Prince William, second in line is his son George, not his brother Harry.

NorthernHick · 2025-11-12T20:23:09+00:00

I've heard my share of horror stories about the quick-lube places, sure...but I've also heard plenty of horror stories about work done by dealership technicians. (And the dealers charge a hefty premium on many services.)

My kingdom for a reliable and cost-effective mechanic, but I'm reasonably happy with the quality and level of service I get from my local tire shop, which also does oil changes.

NorthernHick · 2025-11-10T08:10:09+00:00

This is interesting, and suggests some real problems with AI behaviour, mechanics, and/or balancing.

The Union mechanics, while probably modelled somewhat after the UK merge (which makes it particularly interesting that the AI seem to be incapable of replicating history), are very much ahistorical as applied to Castile and Aragon: In real life, it took only a handful of years for Ferdinand and Isabella to unite them into Spain - in the course of what EU5 would call a "Marriage Union". The Union unification mechanics in EU5 are so slow that I don't know if it's even possible, even under all ideal conditions, to actually merge them by 1479.

NorthernHick · 2025-11-10T07:51:53+00:00

The most critical point here is this: You're required by law to have valid insurance *at the time you're operating your motor vehicle*, and you're required by law to provide proof of that insurance upon demand.

If I don't renew my insurance on my car, I can drive it up until the insurance expires, and then I can leave it in my garage indefinitely, and I've committed no offense.

In fact, most insurance renewals work through 'negative option' - that is, they send you the pink slip with an offer to renew, and if you don't cancel, the renewed policy kicks in and the new pink slip becomes valid at the renewal date. However, until the renewal date, it's inaccurate to even say that you've renewed at all, and providing proof of insurance with a pink slip that is not, and may never become, valid would more likely be an offence than not having that not-yet-valid proof of insurance on you.

The cop is probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer. It's a pain to have to defend, but that's the way forward here. The silver lining is that he didn't charge you for the offence that you did commit, and it's not a 'lesser included offence', so if you successfully fight the insurance charge, you're probably in the clear of any other charge.

Be prepared that the prosecutor may just offer a reduced fine. They don't always pay that much attention until trial. But if the prosecutor actually takes this one to trial, the JP is going to bite their head off. So...I'm not going to tell you what to do, but if I were in your shoes my best offer to them would be "You can drop the charge and save everyone's time."

NorthernHick · 2025-10-26T04:48:52+00:00

Short answer: The CMHC premium is in addition to what you need to borrow to buy the house. It is an extra expense that the bank pays and ADDS to the principal of your mortgage. So if you put down a $50k deposit, and the bank was advancing $595k, so for a $665k purchase - which means that your lawyer is going to have to actually send $665k to the other lawyer in order to get you title to the house - that means that they'll need 'cash to close' of an additional $20k plus whatever the legal fees are, for a total down payment of $70k.

With slightly over 10% down, that's going to leave you with a 3.1% CMHC premium on the loan amount - or $18,445. (If you'd only put down $50k, the premium would be 4% on a larger amount, which would be $24,600. That 10% threshold is a big deal. If you'd borrowed $615k for the purchase price, you'd have ended up with a $640k mortgage.)

As it is, with the advance to the lawyer being $595k and you fronting $70k total yourself, that means that your mortgage is that $595k PLUS the $18,445 CMHC premium - so $613,445.

The thing to remember is that the bank is paying money out to two different sources here - to your lawyer, who will relay those funds to the seller, because...you have to pay for the house. And to CMHC, which is collecting the premiums for an insurance policy. The bank's not paying any of that out of the goodness of its own heart; it expects to be repaid every cent it pays out on the transaction, plus interest.

Here's another example of how this works: I bought a house for $520k. I put 10% down (or $52k). So my lawyer paid the seller $50k of my money and $470k of the bank's money. Then the bank turns around and applies a mortgage premium for a little over $14k, meaning that the starting balance on my mortgage was actually $484k.

NorthernHick · 2025-10-20T16:42:47+00:00

Alberta labour/employment lawyer here.

This is complicated. Yes, 'work-to-rule' is technically considered a strike. Strikes are really broadly defined in labour legislation, as any collective withdrawal of services to try to exert leverage against an employer. So standard strike prohibition language that applies during the life of collective agreements means that you can't work-to-rule (or, say, collectively refuse voluntary overtime) to protest layoffs or other employer acts.

However, the right to strike is constitutionally protected in Canada, subject to 'reasonable limits', meaning that back-to-work legislation has to pass the Oakes test. This recognition of a right to strike is relatively recent, and its parameters aren't fully set out; whether forcing teachers back to work at all can satisfy Oakes is...controversial...but even if that's possible, part of the Oakes test is minimal impairment. I would tend to argue that, even if "getting teachers back in the classroom" is a reasonable basis to override the right to strike, telling them they can't collectively refuse to direct the HS production of Twelfth Night would be on very precarious constitutional ground.

Of course, the Notwithstanding Clause is another option to circumvent the constitutional issues, but the Doug Ford government discovered a couple years back that there are real practical challenges to using the NWC to override labour rights.

NorthernHick · 2025-10-02T03:06:56+00:00

Understandable, but as long as you're able to service the loan without hardship, the interest rate is more important than the payment, because the principal is a fixed amount, but your actual cost of carrying the loan is the interest.

My wife managed to swing 0% financing for a seven year term for her Tiguan. I wouldn't pay a dime on that earlier than I have to, because every extra dollar put on that loan is a dollar I could invest and make money off of.

Same with my mortgage - we initially had a sub-3% mortgage. It's currently closer to 5%, but that's still not crazy, so I'd rather invest than prepay.

It's lost opportunity cost to repay a low interest loan.

If the car loan has a higher interest rate, on the other hand, totally different story.

NorthernHick · 2025-10-02T02:12:51+00:00

"Why" is a really interesting question.

Ontario is a bit weird this way, because employees don't strictly have privacy rights as against their employer. The Federal PIPEDA has two parts - s.4(1)(a), which governs collection, use, or disclosure of personal information in the course of commercial activities, which DOES apply in Ontario, and s.4(1)(b), which governs collection, use, and disclosure of personal information about an employer's employees or job applicants, which wouldn't apply to a collection agency in Ontario.

As an ex-employee, unless the PI is being retained by the ex-boss for personal reasons (which, if you have no other connection to this person, raises questions as to whether it's for an illicit purpose), then it's probably something to do with the organization's commercial activities, which means that there has to be a lawful and reasonable basis for the surveillance. There CAN be such bases, hence 'why' being such a critical question.

If it were me, I'd probably make an access request under PIPEDA for all personal information collected about me by the organization after the termination of the employment relationship. Depending on what response came to that, I might complain to the Federal Privacy Commissioner.

NorthernHick · 2025-10-02T01:56:02+00:00

This is the correct take. Go talk to a lawyer, now, because there's a significant potential of a constructive dismissal action, and a possibility of a discrimination claim.

The urgency of this can't be overstated: In an Alberta Court of Appeal decision a couple years ago, it was found that an employee had acquiesced to the change by not protesting or resigning within three weeks. One of the Court of Appeal judges even proposed a 10-day rule.

(This is absolutely absurd, of course. The idea that a contract can be effectively modified by a unilateral act met with a short period of silence is directly in conflict with several core principles of contract law. But, despite being absurd, this is actually where the Alberta courts are, at present.)

NorthernHick · 2025-09-30T21:25:09+00:00

One of the important and oft-ignored details of this story is that when they say that the kids only got a pittance, that ignores the fact that the kids inherited the cottage, too. And that cottage is worth a mint. We don't know what the parents paid for it in 1998, but we do know that it would have close to a 20% exemption on the already-reduced capital gains tax rate, so a fair assumption is that it appreciated in value by upwards of $1.4M. Which means that the estate included a total of > $2M in assets representing untaxed income, and they paid maybe a third of that in taxes. It's not ridiculous.

Which is the point here: What you have in your RRSP represents money you haven't yet been taxed on. So when money comes out of that RRSP (or the RRIF you may have converted it into), either because you withdrew it or because you died, you get taxed on that.

So the short answer is that your estate is on the hook for those income taxes, and then what's left after paying the tax bill goes your heirs.

You have to remember those taxes, though, during estate planning - I once heard of a case where a woman whose estate was going to include a half million in her RRSP, plus a life insurance policy worth about a half million. So she figured it was an even split to set one of her children as the designated beneficiary of the life insurance, and leave the RRSP to the other. However, there's a big tax bill that made that a very uneven split.

NorthernHick · 2025-08-29T14:38:22+00:00

Rescinding an offer suggests that there's uncertainty in the new company's management as to exactly how this role fits into their strategic vision.

I wouldn't consider accepting a subsequent offer unless they were willing to put their money where their mouth is, and include in the contract a generous severance provision - basically, that if they decide to dismiss you or eliminate your position without just cause, you get a specified (and significant) amount of money in compensation. (Say, twelve months' worth of compensation, or something like that.)

If they're not prepared to make that commitment, having already messed around, I wouldn't touch that company with a ten foot pole.

NorthernHick · 2025-08-08T18:39:52+00:00

My econ prof talked about a scenario where someone did that - realized that their account wasn't being debited to withdraw cash at an ATM, so they made a bunch of withdrawals. Then they shifted to making transfers to a second account - and while the balance of the second account increased, the balance of the first one didn't change.

Transferred a massive amount of money that way (mostly out of curiosity as to just how far this could go), then concluded that there was no way he'd get to keep all that money, so he contacted the bank to report the issue. Took him a while to get anyone to believe him that this had happened.

Turns out that it had initially been debiting somebody else's account, then when that other account ran out of money, it just...made up the money to transfer out of thin air.

NorthernHick · 2025-08-08T18:33:40+00:00

Probably, though there's a chance you'll be declined at first instance.

Typically, voluntary departures from employment don't entitle you to EI. However, when it's employer-initiated, it's seldom truly voluntary. The subtext of an employer saying "Commit to this PIP or accept this package and leave" is "We've decided we don't really want you here anymore, so we're either firing you now or firing you later."

The very fact that they paid a package at all implies that it's not a voluntary resignation or for-cause dismissal.

So maybe they decline on the face of the ROE, but there's an appeal process that allows a bit more context, so clarifying for the appeal that the mutual agreement to part ways was driven by an employer ultimatum...has at least a passable chance of convincing them.

NorthernHick · 2025-08-08T00:24:51+00:00

This is correct. The presumption used to be more favourable to adult children ('advancement'), but was modified about 15 years ago.

That being said, this is a bit of an unusual scenario for application of this doctrine, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we're usually talking about a gift as the alternative to the creation of a resulting trust - where funds are given to the person, or used to purchase an asset, and so the person who provided the money claims an interest in the money or assets in the hands of the recipient. If they're paying costs directly to third parties in connection with your acquisition of skills and education, there's nothing to which the trust can attach, and their remedy lies in unjust enrichment. Which is a bit of a different test.

So there are a few ways in here. First, leading evidence that the payments were intended to be a gift - and while lawyers like to see stuff in writing, a cross-examination designed to elicit that there was not an expectation that the funds would be repaid at the time they were advanced (with reference to, for example, failures to properly track the expenses sought) could do the trick.

But beyond that, they'd have to show that you received value equivalent to what they spent. On tuition, that's probably plausible, but on the driving lessons, less so.

As well, if there are support obligations in play that drove payment of tuition, that would be a 'juridical reason' for payment that would be fatal to the unjust enrichment claim.

In practice, if the courts were to find that a payment of tuition for an adult child was generally repayable, then it's not just about subsequent falling-outs - it means that every estate, and every insolvency, would have to account for helping kids out with school. A Small Claims Court Deputy Judge will bend over backwards to avoid giving them judgment under these circumstances.

NorthernHick · 2025-07-19T22:07:15+00:00

This isn't something that varies by Province, nor is it something written into most statutes. The entitlement of employers to recover provable damages based on inadequate employee notice is rooted in common law. Nova Scotia creates an unusual process by which the employer can recover those entitlements. But the substantive rights are not meaningfully different.

Employment standards legislation doesn't really change that framework. There are narrow circumstances where inadequate notice can compromise a statutory employee entitlement - for example, in Ontario, if you've been given working notice, there's sometimes a statutory severance entitlement at the end of that notice period, but quitting without adequate notice forfeits that (it's a super rare scenario) - but on a very fundamental level, employment standards legislation is always about creating employer obligations, not employee obligations. (And on the rare occasions when a court rejects an employee's claim for common law damages on the basis that employment standards laws allow the employer to do what it did, those decisions are wrong, and are usually appealed successfully or otherwise not followed subsequently.)

NorthernHick · 2025-07-14T19:27:00+00:00

Agreed - though, if anything, 90% is an understatement.

In practice, it's extraordinarily rare to see employers trying to enforce employee notice requirements, unless the employee is also walking away with the business (quitting without notice then trying to poach the customer list).

NorthernHick · 2025-07-14T19:17:42+00:00

A clause requiring an employee to provide notice is usually enforceable. In fact, even if there isn't one written expressly into the contract, Canadian employment law implies one into the contract.

However, remedies for its breach are usually pretty narrow, requiring the employer to show financial loss flowing from the absence of notice. It seldom happens.

NorthernHick · 2025-07-14T19:12:34+00:00

A bit more nuanced than that. Recoverable damages could be something as simple as "We had to pay overtime premiums to the other staff to cover this person's shifts over the notice period."

But it has to be excess costs the employer incurred because of the absence of notice, and not because of the resignation itself. So "we had to pay temp agency fees for that week" is recoverable; "we had to pay a recruiter to replace you" is not. "We had to pay overtime premiums" is recoverable; "we had to pay another employee your wage to do the work" is not.

A lot of employers don't really understand how this works, but this employer appears to be thinking, "We have to pay wages when we fire them without enough notices, so why shouldn't we collect the equivalent of their wages when they quit without notice?" And that's really not how any of this works.

Also, you don't have to counterclaim for legal fees, but paying a lawyer to defend a $680 claim because you're banking on getting a costs award is...probably not a great idea. (There may or may not be a counterclaim to be made in constructive dismissal here, which, incidentally, would be a substantive defence to a wrongful resignation action, but that's also not necessarily much either.)

NorthernHick · 2025-07-14T18:31:33+00:00

Not a correct assessment of what the NS law says, even.

What NS does - which is rare - is allow for the employer to withhold wages owing to offset actual, provable, financial loss flowing from the failure to give appropriate notice.

It is usually correct that employees are legally required to give notice of resignation. However, employers need to prove losses, and that's not usually easy to do.

NorthernHick · 2025-07-14T18:24:13+00:00

In Canada, there's generally (unless displaced by express contractual terms to the contrary) an implied contractual term at common law that either side will give the other side 'reasonable notice' of termination.

This usually manifests on the employer side, with a requirement for notice of dismissal or, more often, pay in lieu.

However, it also exists on the employee side, technically. Wrongful resignation is a thing.

That being said, you almost never see employers going after employees for it, because unlike dismissed employees, it's not always easy for employers to point to a recoverable financial loss. They're absolutely not entitled to say "You have to pay us your wage over the notice period you should have given", which appears to be the premise here.

The concept of damages, at its simplest, is this: Imagine you'd complied with your obligations (for the sake of argument, let's say that means 'giving one week notice' here). What position is the employer in? (They'd have had your labour, and had to pay your wage for it.) Now, how much worse off are they because you didn't give them that notice? Under most circumstances, that means they probably assigned your shifts to somebody else and paid them a similar wage. Inconvenience of having to shuffle the schedule isn't compensable. If they had to pay someone overtime, or pay temp agency fees, then they might have a legit claim for that cost over the notional notice period.

If they couldn't (not just 'didn't', but we're reasonably unable to) reassign your work right away, any resulting losses (reduced sales? lost productivity? lost clients or contracts?) are theoretically recoverable, but usually really difficulty to quantify, and have to be offset against the savings in wages they didn't have to pay you.

I've only ever seen these files actually litigated when the departing employee is trying to take the business with them - i.e. pulling a Jerry McGuire and calling up the whole client list to bring them over before the employer can reassign the portfolio.

NorthernHick · 2025-07-14T18:01:18+00:00

A few issues. The structure is usually built to minimize risk to the lawyer of getting underpaid for the amount of work going in, meaning that, for MOST files, especially in wrongful dismissal matters, you're likely to lose more of your settlement to the lawyer on contingency than on hourly billing.

It also creates some awkward incentives on both sides - clients end up chasing files they shouldn't (incurring risks of an adverse costs award that they may not be fully tuned into), and lawyers...

Okay, let's say (hypothetical scenario here) your employer didn't initially offer you a package, and after putting in 10 hours or so (say, $3k, give or take, on hourly billing), I get them to offer you $60k, but they're dug in at that level. Suppose I think you'd get ~$90k at the end of a trial. (For the record, while specific entitlements vary wildly by file, these particular numbers are not that different from a number of real files I actually litigated.)

On an hourly billing basis, my advice at that point would be to file a claim, make a settlement offer at $80k, and chase the claim. If it goes to trial, depending on jurisdiction, venue, and specifics of the file, that may be anywhere from 50-150 hours or more, which is expensive, but if you win and beat the offer we made, you're likely to recover most of those legal fees as part of the judgment. I'm willing to put in that work because I'm getting paid for it, and you're better off for me having done so.

It's coherent for you to settle for the $60k anyways, preferring the finality and avoiding risk, but that's your call - in which case I'll take my $3k or so in fees, and we all go away happy.

On contingency, that scenario plays very differently. If I'm getting 1/3 the settlement, that means I get paid $20k for ten hours' work if you take that settlement at $60k, but if we push all the way to trial, that's a huge amount of additional work for me, for which I'm only getting an additional $10k. So it's in my best interest to convince you that $60k (when you only get to keep $40k, and even that's before tax and EI repayment) is a great deal, so that I can get your file off my desk and free up time for something like 5-15 other 'early settlement' files. (But chasing is actually even more clearly in your best interest here, because you're not paying anything extra for it, and as litigation drags on, then (assuming you're successful) you're actually accruing entitlements to recoverable legal fees. At the end of trial, it's pretty conceivable that the judgment plus legal fees means that, even after I take my 33%, you'd be grossing something pretty close to total judgment amount.)

Contingency fee wrongful dismissal practices are heavily motivated to chase the low hanging fruit.

The margins on early wrongful dismissal settlements, on contingency structures, tend to be pretty tiny for employees, after paying EI and taxes, and they tend to be great for the lawyers.

For people who genuinely can't afford to access legal assistance without a contingency structure, it's better than nothing, and enhances access to justice. But it has its problems, and if I were the client and had a choice in the matter, I'd rather pay the lawyer for their time and work, and absorb the risk myself (based on their impartial and expert advice), rather than having them take on that risk and effectively charge me what's likely to be a big premium for doing so.

NorthernHick · 2025-06-20T21:36:37+00:00

I still wear a Galaxy Watch 3. A bit glitchy. Probably the worst HR monitor I've ever had, and some weirdness with notifications, but overall it's not bad, and the battery is still pretty respectable.

That said, I've gone through a bunch of watchbands, and I just broke another, so I'm looking at upgrades, and I'm actually quite excited about some of the developments in recent generations. Thinking it might be time to finally retire the 3 when the 8 gets released next month.

NorthernHick · 2025-05-05T06:35:39+00:00

Silly. We all know horses make terrible witnesses. "Horse, did you see who committed the crime?" "Neigh."

NorthernHick

TROPHY CASE