Labour & Employment

  • April 30, 2026

    Feds announce Team Canada Strong, a plan to recruit up to 100,000 skilled trades workers

    Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced a new measure called Team Canada Strong, a $6-billion nationwide effort to “recruit, train and hire 80,000 to 100,000 new Red Seal trades workers in the next five years.”

  • April 30, 2026

    Social media review for visa applicants and travellers: An update

    Increasingly, U.S. government entities appear to be utilizing technology to screen visa and other immigration benefit applicants. In some cases, this has become very public and transparent. For example, most people are aware that phones and other electronic devices can be screened when coming into the United States.

  • April 30, 2026

    AI meets M&A: The new frontier of data risk and compliance

    Artificial intelligence (AI) and associated algorithms increasingly underpin routine business functions and often form part of a company’s product or service offering. In June 2025, Microsoft found that 71 per cent of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) surveyed were actively using AI or generative AI for core operations; among digital-native firms, the rate reached 90 per cent. Behind the scenes, AI models are responsible for making material business decisions, running equipment and offering services to third parties — including health care decisions, dynamic pricing, forecasting, supply chain optimization, customer chats and routing, applicant screening, identity validation, fraud detection and marketing campaigns.

  • April 29, 2026

    CFIB says economic update doesn’t help shrinking number of SMEs

    The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) has stated that measures announced in yesterday’s federal spring economic update were “not enough to halt the alarming loss of small businesses” across the country.

  • April 29, 2026

    Quebec’s new religious accommodation framework: What private sector employers need to know

    On April 2, 2026, Bill 9, An Act respecting the reinforcement of laicity in Québec became law. While much of the public discussion has focused on the public sector implications, private sector employers should pay close attention: the legislation enacts a new Law promoting social cohesion and regulating accommodations for religious reasons (Loi favorisant le vivre-ensemble et encadrant les accommodements pour un motif religieux) that directly applies to them and fundamentally changes the rules governing religious accommodation in the workplace.

  • April 28, 2026

    Ottawa’s economic update proposes apprentice wage subsidies, tax & criminal changes to build ‘Canada Strong’

    The Carney government says it plans to make it a criminal offence to operate a cryptocurrency automated teller machine (ATM) and that it will push ahead with controversial amendments to enable “law enforcement” to search and seize mail.

  • April 28, 2026

    Ontario unveils 10-year forestry plan amid U.S. tariff headwinds

    Ontario has launched a 10-year roadmap to protect its forestry sector and diversify exports beyond the United States, as steep U.S. tariffs and duties weigh on Ontario’s lumber exports to its primary market.

  • April 28, 2026

    Typography for lawyers

    In my last article, I wrote about visualization in law. But visualization is not limited to diagrams or tables. Text itself is visual, and its organization can improve reader engagement and comprehension. This is typography.

  • April 28, 2026

    The importance of accurate, complete patient health records

    Maintaining complete and accurate patient health records is a core responsibility of all regulated health professionals in Ontario. Beyond documenting what occurred during an appointment and supporting continuity of care, proper recordkeeping is both a legal and professional obligation. Failure to meet these standards can result in serious regulatory, employment and financial consequences.

  • April 28, 2026

    Cultural humility and empathy in the legal profession

    Over the past several years, Indigenous issues and reconciliation efforts have started to move out of the shadows and into the forefront of Canadian minds. However, the heightened attention following the May 27, 2021, media release by the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, which revealed a ground-penetrating radar discovery of 215 unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, has since steadily declined, despite the ongoing overrepresentation of Indigenous Peoples in the legal system, continued inequities in child welfare and persistent barriers to accessing culturally appropriate supports.