In 2025, Alberta courts decided on important employment law issues, including severance pay and reasonable notice, employment standards, professional regulation, just cause for termination, and more.
This two-part article summarizes some important employment law decisions in Alberta in 2025. It does not focus on cases from other provinces, although many of those can influence legal decisions here. It also does not address developments in human rights and labour (union) law.
Part 1 of this two-part article covers severance pay and reasonable notice, employment standards, professional regulation and just cause for termination. Part 2 covers employment contracts, duty to mitigate damages for wrongful dismissal and whether summary judgment is right for a constructive dismissal and just cause case.
Severance Pay and Reasonable Notice
In Kirke v Spartan Controls Ltd, 2025 ABCA 40, a company bought back shares from an employee after terminating his employment. The Court of Appeal considered whether the employee was entitled to compensation for payments that would have flowed to him as a holder of the shares if they had not been bought back. Kirke was initially successful at trial, receiving an award of 20 months’ severance and the disputed shares payments. The Court of Appeal interpreted the contract and found the employer had an unrestricted right to buy back the shares after termination. This led the Court of Appeal to conclude there was no reason to assume Kirke would have received payments related to these shares in the reasonable notice period. He was therefore not entitled to them as reasonable notice damages. This case also confirms that termination without reasonable notice is a breach of contract.
In Lischuk v K-Jay Electric Ltd, 2025 ABKB 460 (Justice Angotti), the Court of King’s Bench awarded 26 months’ severance pay to a 58-year-old general manager with 34 years of employment. This is the first case in Alberta to crack through the long-time rough upper limit of 24 months of severance. Justice Angotti reasoned this was a case of “exceptional circumstances”, justifying a longer notice period. The exceptional circumstances included that Lischuk had never worked for any other employers, and he had a 20% equity stake in the business. The Court also found Lischuk had not failed to mitigate damages despite not looking for work, and that he was entitled to bonuses for K-Jay shares held by Lischuk’s corporation.
In Falkenberg v Stephen Avenue Securities Inc, 2025 ABKB 485 (Justice Armstrong), the Court of King’s Bench heard an appeal on whether a part-time employee should be considered “casual” and receive less reasonable notice of termination. In the previous decision, the Applications Judge found the plaintiff was a casual employee and only entitled to 6 months’ reasonable notice. Justice Armstong overturned that decision, deciding instead that the plaintiff was an ordinary employee entitled to 18 months’ severance. Justice Armstrong found the Applications Judge had erred in deciding the plaintiff was a “casual” employee by focusing only on the fact that the plaintiff could not establish regular market wages over a 20-year period. Instead, judges should assess this issue on a case-by-case basis, using a non-exhaustive list of factors.
Employment Standards
In Lika Contracting and Services Ltd v Roldan, 2025 ABESAB 14 (Vice-Chair Scott), the Alberta Employment Standards Appeal Body (“ABESAB”) found the plaintiff Roldan was an employee for the purposes of employment standards, even though the employer, Lika Contracting, was not handling his source deductions for taxes. The ABESAB considered if Roldan was a construction employee, as these employees have limited rights under the Employment Standards Code (“the Code”). The ABESAB noted that construction employees must be present on a site and engaged in certain activities. In this case, simply delivering materials to a construction site was not enough. Since Roldan was not a construction employee, he was entitled to termination notice, vacation pay and holiday pay under the Code. The ABESAB reached a similar conclusion in Sub-Terrain Excavating & Trucking Ltd v Ross.
In 2409433 Alberta Inc o/a Papa Murphy’s v Manmeet Kaur, 2025 ABESAB 16 (Vice-Chair Scott), the ABESAB considered whether a worker was a volunteer or an employee. The worker had worked some shifts for a pizza shop for a trial period. The pizza shop argued it did not owe her wages because she had volunteered, and just for a trial period. However, the pizza shop had trained the worker to make pizza and do other for-profit business activities, and had scheduled her for shifts. The ABESAB found this was employment and not volunteerism under the Code. The ABESAB ordered the pizza shop to pay the worker’s wages for the shifts she worked.
Professional Regulation
In Kherani v Alberta Dental Association, 2025 ABCA 2, the Court of Appeal upheld a significant costs award against a dentist, after several findings of unprofessional conduct. The Dental Association Tribunal originally ordered the dentist to pay 50% of the estimated $150,000 costs of the investigation and hearing. The dentist appealed this to the Dental Association’s Appeal Panel, asking to reduce the costs based on the key case Jinnah v Alberta Dental Association and College, 2022 ABCA 336. The 2022 case created a presumption that “the profession as a whole” is to bear the costs of unprofessional conduct, unless the profession can rebut the presumption with “compelling reasons.” The Appeal Panel reduced the costs to $40,000. The dentist appealed the decision to the Alberta Court of Appeal.
At the Court of Appeal, the dentist argued the costs order was unwarranted because the proven allegations did not fall into the categories outlined in Jinnah. The Court found the revised costs order was reasonable and proportionate given how significant the proven allegations were, which justified the dentist bearing some of the financial burden.
In Basaraba v College of Chiropractors, 2025 ABKB 176 (Justice Whitling), the Court of King’s Bench outlined how important procedural fairness is, and how seriously it must be taken in professional regulation. In this case, three patients accused the chiropractor of touching sensitive areas of their bodies without consent. Initially, the College of Chiropractors imposed a condition requiring the chiropractor be supervised while working. After some supervised practice, the College learned of further allegations of inappropriate conduct and that the chiropractor had allegedly breached the supervision condition. The College informed the chiropractor there had been an allegation of breaching the supervision condition but provided no details of the breach. The College gave the chiropractor five days to respond. The College suspended the chiropractor until the professional conduct hearing.
The Court of King’s Bench found the College had not given the chiropractor enough information about the alleged breach for them to meaningfully or intelligently respond, which was a breach of procedural fairness. The Court overturned the interim suspension. This decision highlights that even when public protection is urgent, regulators must give professionals enough information to meaningfully respond to allegations.
Just Cause for Termination
In Arbor Tech Utility Services Ltd o/a Arbortech Utility Services v Coderre, 2024 ABESAB 23 (Vice-Chair Semaine), the employer gave the employee a few warnings about her job performance and casual office dress. The last warning was two days before the employer terminated her employment. The termination letter said she had been terminated for cause due to “poor performance” and “insubordination”. The ABESAB categorized this as a termination for alleged cumulative incompetence. The ABESAB found there was no just cause for several reasons, including that the employer had not provided the employee with benchmarks of expectations or a reasonable opportunity to improve after the last warning.
In Concrete Inc v De Guzman, 2025 ABESAB 7 (Vice-Chair Semaine), the ABESAB considered whether an employer had just cause to dismiss an employee for violating a company policy against personal use of company computers. The employee was a project manager and estimator. She had signed a training document that listed terminable offenses like talking, texting and using a phone for personal matters at work. The employer also had a progressive discipline policy with typical steps like verbal warnings, written warnings, suspensions and terminations. The employer discovered the employee had accessed her personal email and appeared to have done personal career searches on company devices. The employer terminated her employment, purportedly for cause. The ABESAB found the employee’s behaviour was misconduct but not just cause for dismissal because:
- the misconduct was not on the serious end for this type of misconduct,
- the employer’s policies were not consistent and clear on how to treat this particular misconduct, and
- the employer’s evidence of misconduct was not clear enough.
In Hiebert v Zimco Instrumentation Inc, 2025 ABCJ 133 (Justice Argento), the Court of Justice considered whether an employer had just cause to dismiss an internal sales employee with 11 years of service due to incompetence. About four years before his termination, the employer gave the employee one written warning for alleged poor performance. About five months before his termination, the employee’s performance review identified some areas of concern but did not set specific performance targets or warn that failure to improve might end in termination. The Court found the employer had not given the employee a clear warning that failure to improve would lead to termination. The Court noted: “A warning without an opportunity to improve is effectively not a warning at all. Whether the Plaintiff would have improved after being warned of possible termination is not determinative as he was not afforded the opportunity”.
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DISCLAIMER The information in this article was correct at time of publishing. The law may have changed since then. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of LawNow or the Centre for Public Legal Education Alberta.
About Joel Fairbrother
