Written By Carl Cunningham, Talia K. Bregman and Tyler W. Henderson

On November 28, 2017, Ontario’s Bill 148, the Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, 2017, received royal assent. What this means is that major changes are on the horizon for all provincially-regulated workplaces in Ontario.

More specifically, in addition to amending Ontario’s Labour Relations Act and Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act, Bill 148 will amend Ontario’s Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA), which establishes the minimum rights and obligations of provincially-regulated employees and employers in Ontario. These minimums cannot be contracted out of. Accordingly, Ontario employers are urged to take note of these changes to ensure they remain in compliance with the law.

Due to the significance of these changes, we will be delivering a series blog posts that will provide a practical overview of the upcoming changes to the ESA. This blog post, the first in the series, summarizes the changes to the ESA’s leaves of absence.

Changes to Ontario’s Statutory Leaves of Absence

A statutory leave of absence can be understood as an employee’s right to take job-protected time off work in certain situations. As of today’s date, there are nine leaves under the ESA. Bill 148 will modify seven of them. It will also introduce a new type of leave.

As of December 3, 2017

As of January 1, 2018

Practical Implications for Ontario Employers

To be compliant with the new changes to the ESA’s leave of absence provisions, provincially-regulated employers in Ontario should take steps to:

• review and update workplace policies, handbooks and employment agreement templates to reflect these new leave entitlements;
• train managers and HR personnel about the new laws and how they will impact the workplace, including when medical notes supporting a leave can and cannot be required;
• develop a procedure to track the number of days of leave taken, especially personal emergency leave days and domestic and sexual violence leave days, to ensure that the first two and five days, respectively, are paid. This procedure may then serve as evidence of an employer’s compliance with the minimum requirements under the ESA, if such compliance is ever called into question; and
• ensure the wording of workplace policies that provide employees with paid days off work (e.g., paid sick days), which amount to a greater right or benefit than the statutory leaves under the ESA, are updated to reduce the likelihood that employees can stack statutory entitlements on top of other paid days provided by the employer.

Next up in our series is an overview of the changes affecting compensation. Stay tuned.

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