August

"In Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart's recommendations for reforming PIPEDA, she says amendments should include stronger enforcement powers, mandatory data breach reporting, teeth behind accountability and increased transparency measures. ""The root of many of the privacy challenges we face is that technology is growing so quickly that some companies are failing to address privacy issues in the competitive rush (and they are) creating products that can be used in highly privacy-intrusive ways, ways that consumers don't anticipate, much less knowingly consent to,"" Stoddart said. As many as one in four websites the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) has tested recently were either unaware they were disclosing information to third parties or were not clearly disclosing that they were providing information to third-party service providers. Stoddart said these are major privacy concerns, but ""our law does not contain the right incentives to make sure privacy is a consideration when companies produce risk assessments. It's clear that without amendments, PIPEDA will be even less up to the task in the future. The balance that PIPEDA is supposed to bring is increasingly not there."" "

"An employee was entitled to refuse to submit to a reasonable-suspicion drug test where a supervisor smelled marijuana in the employee's truck but had no other evidence of drug use or impairment, a Nova Scotia judge has held. The employee refused, saying ""it is none of your business what I do when I am not here"", and said that he was a recreational user of marijuana and that the test would be positive anyway. The employee was referred to a Substance Abuse Professional but refused to answer questions about his off-duty drug use. The City fired the employee for his ""lack of cooperation and direct violation of the HRM Substance Abuse Prevention Policy."" The employee grieved the termination, and an arbitrator reinstated him. The City asked the court to overturn the arbitrator's decision. The court noted that although the City had a legal obligation to protect employees' safety under OSHA, the arbitrator reasonably concluded that the evidence suggesting that the employee had used or been impaired by drugs on the job was very weak. In short, the fact that the City had ""safety concerns"" about the employee did not permit the City to dismiss him where the City did not have just cause"

Surveys suggest that many job applicants lie on their resume and that education is the most frequently falsified qualification on a resume. There are only a handful of cases that have litigated this issue in Canada, but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. When it does happen, it's typically resolved through negotiated exits, sparing both the employer and the employee public damage to their reputations. If the parties cannot agree and are forced into litigation, it should provide some comfort to employers that a fraudulent representation, when proven, may render the employment contract void or reduce overall liability. A fraudulent misrepresentation is one which is made with knowledge that it is untrue and with the intent to deceive You can prove fraudulent misrepresentation by establishing the following: 1. The representations complained of were made by the employee to the employer, 2. The representations were false in fact, 3. The employee either made the representations knowing they were false or made them recklessly without knowing whether they were false or true, and 4. The employer was induced to enter into the contract in question by the employee's representations. If you don't do your due diligence at hiring, you risk the real life drama of hiring a Frank Abignale.