In a previous post, I mentioned that Justice Rothstein of the Supreme Court of Canada spoke about fiduciary duties in the employment context at the "10th Annual Employment Summit" in Toronto.

Specifically, he referred to recent cases before the Court in which fiduciary duties had been alleged: RBC Dominion Securities Inc. v. Merrill Lynch Canada Inc., 2008 SCC 54 and Galambos v. Perez, 2009 SCC 48.

What type of relationships will give rise to fiduciary duties?

In the leading case of Lac Minerals Ltd. v. International Corona Resources Ltd., [1989] 2 S.C.R. 574, which is not an employment law case, the Supreme Court of Canada stated that relationships in which a fiduciary duties have been imposed generally, although not always, share three general characteristics:

1. The fiduciary has scope for the exercise of some discretion or power.
2. The fiduciary can unilaterally exercise that power or discretion so as to affect the beneficiary's legal or practical interests.
3. The beneficiary is peculiarly vulnerable to or at the mercy of the fiduciary holding the discretion or power.

The one feature, the court noted, which is considered to be indispensable to the existence of the fiduciary relationship is that of dependency or vulnerability.