On October 25, 2021, the Ontario government announced that it would be introducing Bill 27 or the Working for Workers Act, 2021, (the "Bill 27") which legislated a number of changes that impacted man provincially regulated employers. A summarized list of the proposed changes can be found on the government's website. In this article, we have summarized two important changes brought about by Bill 27.

NO MORE NON-COMPETE AGREEMENTS.SORT OF

While non-compete agreements are notoriously difficult to enforce (i.e. they are presumptively unenforceable), the government has made the decision to implement an outright ban on the use of non-competes for all provincially regulated employers. To most employment lawyers, this does not represent a drastic change. Non-compete agreements were extremely difficult to enforce, even prior to this outright ban, and they attracted a very high degree of judicial scrutiny. In most situations where they were implemented, they were, in truth, probably utilized for their "chilling effect"; many employees would be unlikely to dispute the enforceability of a non-compete, as they were probably unaware that they are extremely difficult to enforce. Even still, the Ontario government decided to remove all doubt about the issue by implementing an outright ban (sort of, see below). Importantly, it should be noted that the reprisal provisions under the Employment Standards Act, 2000 ("ESA") will apply, meaning that an employer cannot punish an employee in any...

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