LAWS & ANNOUNCEMENTS

Health & Safety

May 30: Effective through August 29, Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and foreign travelers seeking to enter Canada who’ve been in the Congo, Uganda, or South Sudan within the previous 21 days must undergo assessment for Ebola upon arrival. While in the country, they must have access to a location where they can safely stay for 21 days.

Action Point: Find out how to create a policy for business travel to dangerous locations.

Leaves of Absence

May 29: The House is one step from passing Bill C-222 amending the Canada Labour Code to provide that employees entitled to maternity or parental leave to care for a newborn or newly adopted child or a child remain entitled to leave even if the child dies during the leave period. “Evan’s Law” also amends the Employment Insurance Act to provide that a person to whom EI benefits are payable to care for a newborn or child placed for adoption remains eligible to receive those benefits even if the child dies during the benefit period.

Action Point: Find out how to implement a legally sound Parental Leave Compliance Game Plan at your workplace.

Employment Contracts

Jun 3: Second Reading for Bill C-31 banning federally regulated employers from adding a non-compete clause to an employment contract, with limited exceptions. It would also be illegal to reject a job applicant or take reprisals against a current employee for objecting to such a clause, which the Bill defines as “a term or condition of employment, or a clause in an agreement, that prohibits an employee from engaging in any business, work, occupation or trade, profession, project or other activity that is in competition with the employer’s federal work, undertaking, or business after the employee ceases to be employed.‍”

Action Point: Find out why you should use non-solicitation instead of non-compete clauses to protect your company.

Immigration

July 15: July 15 is the effective date of new federal regulations allowing the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants to impose tighter controls on immigration consultants and impose stricter penalties on consultants who break the rules.

Action Point: Find out what companies and their HR directors need to know to navigate the immigration law maze.

Payroll

May 21: Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) published the revised 2026 Guide T4127 Payroll Deductions Formulas governing deductions made on or after July 1, 2026. The guide lists the formulas necessary to determine federal, provincial (except Québec), and territorial income taxes, Canada Pension Plan (CPP) contributions, and employment insurance (EI) premium deductions.

Action Point: Find out about the 8 important new payroll changes that will affect your current year T4 filings and 2026 source deductions.

New Laws

Jun 3: The Canadian government extended key steel and aluminum tariff measures due to expire at the end of the month for another year. The steel tariff-rate quotas (TRQ) regime for imports from non-CUSMA partners is extended to June 27, 2027, and the horizontal tariff relief for eligible steel and aluminum products from the US is extended to June 30, 2027. Current quota levels for the TRQs will continue to be based on 20% of 2024 volumes for partners without a free trade agreement with Canada, and 75% for partners with a free trade agreement in force with Canada. Imports exceeding quota limits will continue to be subject to a 50% tariff.

Action Point: Find out about the 8 ways the U.S. tariffs affect Canadian workplaces and HR activities.

New Laws

Jun 4: The federal government launched a new Action Plan to support the country’s vital Forest Sector. Priority areas: i. Securing a competitive and predictable supply of wood fibre; ii. Supporting innovation and modernization; iii. Expanding domestic and international market opportunities; and iv. Supporting workers and communities through skills development measures.

Labour Relations

Jun 8: The House tabled but probably won’t pass Private Member Bill C-284 amending the Canada Labour Code to provide that during a strike or lockout, an employer may not use the services of any person who performs management functions or who’s employed in a confidential capacity in matters related to industrial relations in another workplace to perform the duties of an employee who is in the bargaining unit on strike or locked out.

New Laws

Jun 12: Bill C-35, which passed First Reading, bans the importation of goods produced by forced labour. Under the legislation, the Minister of Foreign Affairs would establish a list of goods in respect for which there are reasonable grounds to suspect are produced by forced labour. Persons importing goods on the list must, at a customs officer’s request, provide the Canada Border Services Agency required information to bring the goods into the country.

New Laws

May 29: The federal government announced a $100 million investment to fund the design and construction of a demonstration plant for the deployment of Rio Tinto Alcan’s ELYSISTM aluminum electrolysis technology. The strategic purpose of the investment is to position Canada at the forefront of the global transition to low-carbon, high-value aluminum manufacturing. Aluminum is a strategic sector for Canada’s economy, underpinning key industries including defence, aerospace, automotive, energy, and infrastructure.

Discrimination

Jun 4: The Senate and House have now both passed Bill C-9 making it a crime to wilfully promote hatred against any identifiable group by displaying certain symbols in a public place or intentionally obstruct or intimidate a person from attending a mosque or other public place of religious worship and repealing the requirement that the Attorney General consent to the prosecution of hate propaganda offences.

Accessibility

Jun 1: Accessibility Standards Canada published a new standard for the delivery of services in an inclusive and accessible way. To meet the new ASC-5.2.1: Accessible Service Delivery, organizations must offer services in multiple accessible ways, communicate via plain language and accessible formats, respond to individual needs in a timely and equitable way, involve disabled people in services design, train staff to deliver accessible and inclusive services, ensure access for people using supports, and provide alternatives during service disruptions.

Action Point: Find out more about accessibility laws across Canada.

Privacy

Jun 15: First reading for Bill C-36, the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act, governing how businesses collect, use, and disclose personal information. Canada’s current private-sector privacy law, PIPEDA, is more than 25 years old and was written before artificial intelligence (AI) came into mass use. Highlights of the PPCDA: i. recognition of privacy as a fundamental right; ii. new restrictions on handline children’s personal information online; iii. new transparency standards requiring organizations to describe how they use personal information; iv. new rights of individuals to request deletion or disposal of their personal information; and v. new limits on transparency pricing and other business uses of personal data.

Privacy

Jun 10: The newly tabled Safe Social Media Act (Bill C-34) requires social media providers and AI chatbots to protect children and other vulnerable individuals against online harms. To be enforced by an agency called the Digital Safety Commission of Canada (DSCA), the law requires service operators to perform risk identification and implement a Digital Safety Plan outlining measures to address identified risks, including safety-focused design features, labeling of harmful content, and blocking children’s online access to potentially harmful content.

Action Point: Use the HR Insider template to create your own social media use policy.

Privacy

July 10: July 10 is the deadline to participate in public review of the Privacy Act, which was adopted in 1983 to require federal institutions to safeguard the confidentiality of the personal information entrusted to them. The Treasury Board, which administers the Act, has proposed changes to modernize the law for the digital age.

Action Point: Find out how to avoid privacy violations when using digital technology to monitor employees.

Workplace Violence

Jun 15: Debate continues on Bill C-16 adding new sexual violence protections to the Criminal Code, including a new offence for engaging in a pattern of coercive or controlling conduct toward an intimate partner and making it a first degree murder to commit what’s called “femicide” (when the victim is female), defined as murder against an intimate partner as part of a pattern of coercive or controlling conduct, sexual violence, human trafficking or motivated by hate. The bill would also provide for tougher penalties for manslaughter committed in those circumstances while making it easier for victims to prove they were subject to criminal harassment.

Action Point: Are you doing enough to protect your employees against violence at work? Find out about the 10 things you must do to prevent workplace violence.

Workplace Violence

Jun 9: Bill C-225 amending the Criminal Code to create new offences for engaging in intimate partner violence and ban peace officers from releasing persons arrested for an intimate partner offence if they’ve committed such an offence in the last five years or are at large on a release order for such an offence, has now passed Second Reading in the House having already passed Third Reading in the Senate.

Workplace Violence

May 27: Having passed the Senate, Bill S-242 (Georgina’s Law) requiring the federal government to develop a national action to prevent intimate partner violence and support is through First Reading in the House of Commons. The government would have to propose the plan within one year and provide progress reports on its implementation every two years.

Workplace Violence

May 27: In response to the spate of assaults on healthcare workers, the Senate passed and the House of Commons gave Second Reading to Bill S-233 amending the Criminal Code to require a court to consider the fact that the victim of an assault is a person who provides health services or a first responder to be an aggravating circumstance for the purposes of sentencing.

Drugs & Alcohol

May 29: The federal Minister for Internal Trade called on the provinces and territories to complete negotiations and implement direct-to-consumer sales of alcohol agreements that would allow Canadians to purchase wine, beer, or spirits directly from producers in other provinces.

Drugs & Alcohol

Jun 15: Thanks to more widespread availability of naloxone kits and other factors, national drug toxicity death rates declined by 23% in 2025 compared to 2024. However, despite the recent declines, toxic drug overdose deaths remain a big problem in Canada, according to Health Canada.

Action Point: Find out how to implement a naloxone opioid drug overdose plan that can help you prevent overdose deaths at your workplace.

CASES

Workplace Violence: Supreme Court Recognizes New Intimate Partner Violence Tort

In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized a new tort allowing victims of intimate partner violence to sue their abusive partners for money damages. The case upholds an Ontario trial court decision awarding $100,000 to the wife who suffered physical assault, humiliation, intimidation, and conduct intending to inflict emotional distress from her husband over the course of her 16-year marriage. Unlike the Ontario high court, the Supreme Court concluded that currently existing torts aren’t adequate to compensate the harms domestic violence victims suffer. To win damages under the new intimate partner violence tort, the claimant must show abusive conduct by which one intimate partner coerces and controls the other, thus depriving them of their autonomy, which may include egregious acts of physical and psychological violence, tactics of isolation, manipulation, humiliation, surveillance, economic abuse, sexual coercion, and intimidation that can control and entrap [Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, 2026 SCC 16 (CanLII), May 15, 2026].

Action Point: Intimate partner violence becomes an OHS compliance issue when it happens at the victim’s workplace. Bottom Line: Simply having a workplace violence prevention plan isn’t enough. You also need to incorporate protections against workplace domestic violence into the prevention plan. Find out how to implement an effective Workplace Domestic Violence Prevention Plan to protect your own workers.

Overtime: Pilots Not Entitled to Overtime for Cancelled Training Session

The union claimed that airline pilots who agreed to take flight simulator training on their day off were entitled to overtime pay for the day even though the session was canceled. The federal arbitrator disagreed and tossed the grievance. The compensatory allowance provided for in the collective agreement to offset the inconvenience of having to sacrifice a day of rest to perform a task at the employer's request only applies when an employee actually works, the arbitrator reasoned. But the pilots were released from the simulator session before their scheduled work began. Since they didn’t work, they weren’t entitled to increased pay [Airline Pilots Association v. Air Transat AT Inc., 2026 CanLII 52452 (CA SA), June 1, 2026].

Action Point: Find out about the rules governing whether employees are entitled to be paid for training time.

Labour Relations: Union Crosses Line by Telling Workers to Honour Illegal Strikers’ Picket Lines

A federal appeals court set aside a labour board ruling dismissing complaints against a union council for encouraging non-striking ship repair workers to honour the picket lines of Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) workers engaging in a massive illegal strike against the Department of National Defence (DND) in April 2024. Since the PSAC strike was illegal, the call not to cross the picket lines violated the union’s labour relations law duty not to council its members to engage in an illegal strike, the DND argued. The board sided with the union, but the court found its reasoning faulty and ordered a new hearing by a different panel [Canada (Attorney General) v. Federal Government Dockyards, Trades and Labour Council, 2026 FCA 105 (CanLII), May 28, 2026].