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Monday, April 20, 2026

Shakedowns in the guise of whistleblower complaints can have severe consequences - Lexology

Employees should be cautious in coming forward with information that is false or intentionally crafted to cause embarrassment.

Being a whistleblower can mean many things, and usually results in the glorification of the one coming forward.

In the employment law world, whistleblower complaints are usually coupled with the aggrieved employee alleging a reprisal after they raised the troubling allegations with their employer. The reprisal usually looks like mistreatment at work, ostracization from people and tasks, harassment from the aggressor (sometimes continued harassment), unwarranted discipline, and in some cases — termination.

In Ontario, there is whistleblower legislation that protects employees from being penalized at work for coming forward with certain forms of legitimate complaints in relation to their employer.

In our practice, most whistleblower complaints at work include:

Discrimination on Human Rights-protected grounds: Canadian Human Rights legislation protects employees from harassment based on their race, colour, gender, religion, ancestry, where they were born, age, physical or mental disability, family status, source of income or sexual orientation;

Harassment: This could be sexualized in nature, or could include bullying at work (note to reader: not all one-off incidents are legally harassment) sometimes involving the abuse of positional power;

Being asked to do something unlawful or unsafe: Employees have the legal right to refuse this work.

While there...



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