I attended the Law Society of Upper Canada's "10^th Annual Employment Law Summit" in Toronto today.

The keynote speaker was the Honourable Mr. Justice Marshall Rothstein of the Supreme Court of Canada. He focused his comments on two recent cases in which the SCC has addressed fiduciary duties in the employment context:

• RBC Dominion Securities Inc. v. Merrill Lynch Canada Inc., 2008 SCC 54, in which it was argued, unsuccessfully at trial and not dealt with on appeal, that  the employees in question owed a fiduciary duty to the employer; and
• Galambos v. Perez, 2009 SCC 48, a judgment that was issued last week and in which it was argued, unsuccessfully, that the employer in question owed a fiduciary duty to the employee.

Justice Rothstein wasn't the only member of the judiciary to present. The final session of the day consisted of "judge's panel" comprised of Mr. Justice Goudge of the Ontario Court of Appeal, and Justices Archibald, Ducharme and Polak of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. The four judges weighed in on a range of issues touching on employment law matters.

Notably, Justice Goudge had been one of three justices on the Ontario Court of Appeal panel that rendered the decision in Honda v. Keays, 2006 CanLII 33191, which was  subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada (2008 SCC 39). The SCC's  decision is Honda is one of the most important Canadian employment law developments in the last decade. Among other things, the Court did away with Wallace damages, which were awarded through an extension to the notice period, and replaced them with moral damages, which are to be quantified according to the Hadley principle (i.e. a lump sum amount of money).   

Justice Polak's perspectives were also of interest in that she had a labour and employment law practice, first at Stikeman Elliot and then at Davis & Company, before being appointed to the Bench in 2008.

The Summit was co-chaired by Barry Kuretzky (Kuretzky Vassos Henderson LLP) and Howard Levitt (Lang Michener LLP). Mr. Levitt is well known as the author of The Law of Dismissal in Canada, among other texts, and because of his syndicated newspaper column on employment law matters. After chairing the Summit for its first ten years, Mr. Kuretsky and Mr. Levitt will be passing the baton next year to Barry Fisher, a well known mediator and arbitrator, and Connie Reeve, a practitioner at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP.

At a substantive level, the key Ontario employment law related developments that were highlighted by the various speakers at the conference, included:

• the amendments to the Ontario Rules of Civil Procedure that will take effect on January 1, 2010 and which will, among other things, make summary judgments more available to plaintiffs at a reduced risk.
• Bill 168, which was introduced in April 2009 and which is currently before the Ontario Standing Committee on Social Policy.  Bill 168, should it receive Royal Assent, will insert workplace violence and harassment provisions into the Ontario Occupational Health and Safety Act.
• the Bill 107 changes to the Ontario Human Rights Code which came into effect in June 2008. As a result of these amendments, civil courts now have the statutory authority to adjudicate Human Rights Code matters and award remedies (Section 46.1(1) of the Code).