Throughout the year we have been blogging on the progress of Bill 203, Ontario’s Pay Transparency Act, 2018 (the Act).  Check out our posts discussing the Act here and here. As of our last post in May 2018, this Act was set to come into force on January 1, 2019. Well, in the spirit of keeping things interesting, the Ford government has decided that that is not to be.

Bill 57

Bill 57, a Ford government initiative titled the Restoring Trust, Transparency and Accountability Act, 2018 received Royal Assent in the legislature of Ontario on December 6, 2018. One aspect of this omnibus bill was delaying the commencement of the Act from January 1, 2019, to “a day to be named by proclamation of the Lieutenant Governor.” So basically for an unknown amount of time and possibly indefinitely.

Pre-employment police record checks have become common in our information-obsessed society. This is where the employer requires a job candidate to pass a police record check as a condition of being hired. The Police Record Checks Reform Act  (the “Act”) was designed to standardize why and when these record checks can be obtained, as opposed to leaving it up to individual police forces to figure out.

As of November 1, 2018 new requirements regarding pre-employment police record checks are in force.  

Bill 47, the Ford government’s Making Ontario Open for Business Act has passed. One big change the bill makes is to the much discussed (and much used) Bill 148 amendment regarding Personal Emergency Leave. This amendment will come into force on January 1, 2019.

For historical purposes, you can read all about the Bill 148 version of Personal Emergency Leave on our blog here.

Under the Bill 47 version of the Employment Standards Act, we will soon have Sick Leave, Family Responsibility Leave and Bereavement Leave instead of Personal Emergency Leave.

Who thought employment standards weren’t exciting?! Yesterday, the Ontario government passed Bill 47, Making Ontario Open for Business Act, 2018, reversing most of Bill 148.  2018 has seen a slew of changes to the Ontario Employment Standards Act, most of which are now all undone.

See our recent blog post on Bill 47 for a summary of the changes.  Here is a link to the full Bill 47 on the government website.

This was the question asked in English v. Manulife Financial Corporation, 2018 ONSC 5135 (English). In this case, English, a 66-year-old employee decided to retired when her employer, Manulife Financial Corporation, announced in 2015 that they would be converting their technology and employees would be required to learn a new system. She made this decision on her own and voluntarily. English presented her resignation letter to her boss on September 22, 2016, which stated that she would retire, effective December 31, 2016.

The Employer’s Response

When presented with her resignation letter, English’s boss asked her if she was sure about resigning. He also told her that if she changed her mind she could take back her resignation. English left the meeting with the impression that she could change her mind about her decision.

On October 11, 2016, Manulife announced that it was suspending the technology conversion. This announcement did change English’s mind about retirement. She verbally told her boss that she wished to rescind her notice of retirement. Her boss said nothing in response.

That’s right! Even robots. How would you like to perform only the most high-level and uniquely human elements of your job?  Are your skills really best utilized on data entry, rote memorization and pushing paper? Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to delegate all the drudgery of your job to machines while freeing you up to mingle with clients on the golf course and answer phone calls from your private yacht in the Adriatic Sea.

It almost sounds too good to be true.  But are machines really up to the task?

One industry that has highly leveraged AI is recruitment.  As we have previously written about here, the task of sifting through hundreds or thousands of resumes is uniquely suited to machines.  An important feature of the application of AI to recruitment is reducing human bias in the selection of candidates.  But as we warned, an AI system is only as good as the data inputted into it – a critical point recently confronted by Amazon.