What Counts as Wrongful Dismissal and What Can I Claim?

What makes a dismissal “wrongful”

Wrongful dismissal does not mean an employer fired you for a bad or unfair reason. It means the employer ended the employment without cause and failed to give reasonable notice, or pay instead of notice. This is a common-law doctrine that applies federally, and in every province including Ontario and Alberta: employment contracts carry an implied term that an employer must give reasonable notice before dismissing an employee without cause, and a court’s job is to work out what notice was reasonable on the facts and to award damages for the loss caused by not giving it, as established in Bardal v. Globe & Mail Ltd.. An employer can generally end employment for almost any reason, or no stated reason, without it being “wrongful” in this legal sense, provided proper notice (or pay in lieu) is given.

What you can claim: notice and damages

The core claim in a wrongful dismissal case is damages equal to the income and benefits you lost during the period of reasonable notice you should have received. The Supreme Court of Canada in Honda Canada Inc. v. Keays confirms that this notice period is fixed by weighing factors such as your position in the company hierarchy and your length of service, among other circumstances of the case.

Beyond lost notice-period income, two further categories of damages can apply:

1. Aggravated or punitive damages. The same Supreme Court decision recognizes these as available where the manner of the dismissal itself, not just the decision to dismiss, was conducted in bad faith.
2. A high bar for “bad faith.” For conduct to justify these extra damages, it has to go beyond carelessness. The Ontario Superior Court in Keays, applying the Supreme Court’s earlier reasoning in Wallace v United Grain Growers Ltd, describes the threshold as conduct “akin to intent, malice, or blatant disregard for the employee,” including callous or insensitive treatment, not simply an employer that was disorganized or slow.

Statutory minimums in Ontario and Alberta

Separate from the common-law notice claim, both provinces set statutory minimums an employer must meet, and these operate as a floor, not a substitute for what a court later finds is “reasonable.” The two provinces structure this differently.

In Ontario, an employee who does not receive the required written notice must instead be given termination pay in lieu, and eligible longer-service employees may separately qualify for statutory severance pay where the employer meets the payroll threshold. In Alberta, the Employment Standards Code sets notice length by service, and where an employer chooses to pay instead of giving working notice, that termination pay must match at least what the employee would have earned working regular hours during the notice period.

Federally regulated employees: a separate complaint route

If you work for a federally regulated employer (for example, in banking, telecommunications, or interprovincial transportation), you may have an additional, statutory route that exists alongside a common-law wrongful dismissal claim. Under the Canada Labour Code, a non-unionized employee who has completed 12 consecutive months of continuous employment and is not covered by a collective agreement can file an unjust dismissal complaint, and this must be done within 90 days of the dismissal.

Why the distinction matters

Because wrongful dismissal turns on notice, not on whether the firing was justified, the practical question in most cases isn’t “was this fair?” but “was the notice, or pay instead of it, enough?” The statutory minimums in Ontario and Alberta set a floor an employer cannot go below. The common-law reasonable notice standard from Bardal and Honda Canada Inc. v. Keays is a separate, fact-specific inquiry that a court applies on top of that floor, and it is what determines the full size of a wrongful dismissal claim.