Ontario’s “right to disconnect” law came into effect on June 2, requiring companies to develop policies that allow employees to disconnect outside of regular office hours, but what does it mean in practice?
The new law – the first of its kind in Canada – comes with big loopholes and ultimately does not add much to existing laws, according to two employment lawyers who spoke with CTVNews.ca.
“It's very shiny and it looks very impressive, but once you look into it substantively, there's no skin on the bones to this,” Jared Lecker, an associate with Lecker & Associates focusing on employment law and human rights in the workplace, said in a phone interview.
Here is what you should know about what the law says, how it came to be, what the key loopholes are, who is excluded, and more.
The new law is part of the Working for Workers Act. It requires employers to have “a written policy in place for all employees with respect to disconnecting from work” and requires all employees be given a copy within 30 days of its creation or if any changes are made to an existing policy.
The law defines “disconnecting from work” as “not engaging in work-related communications, including emails, telephone calls, video calls or the sending or reviewing of other messages, so as to be free from the performance of work.”
Legal experts, however, say the way the Ontario law is written is very bureaucratic and does not cover significant new ground.
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