What Should I Do If I'm Fired From Federally Regulated Employment?

Steps to take after a federal dismissal

1. Request written reasons for the dismissal. The employer must respond within 15 days.
2. Work out what notice or pay in lieu, and severance, you are owed. These are separate from any unjust dismissal complaint and apply even if the dismissal wasn’t unjust.
3. Check whether you qualify to file an unjust dismissal complaint. Eligibility depends on length of service and union status.
4. File the complaint at a Labour Program office within 90 days of the dismissal.
5. Go through the Labour Program’s mediation stage, which happens before any adjudication.
6. If mediation doesn’t resolve it, the complaint proceeds to adjudication before the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB).
7. Know your parallel options: a civil wrongful dismissal claim, a separate monetary complaint for unpaid wages, or (if unionized) the grievance process under your collective agreement.

This sequence applies to employees of federally regulated employers under Part III of the Canada Labour Code. It does not apply to employees whose employer is provincially regulated (most workplaces in Ontario or Alberta); those employees fall under their province’s employment standards legislation instead.

Step 1: Request written reasons for the dismissal

A dismissed employee, or the Labour Program’s Head of Compliance and Enforcement, can make a written request to the employer for a written statement giving the reasons for the dismissal. Once that request is made, the employer must provide the statement within 15 days. Having this in writing matters before deciding whether to challenge the dismissal, because the employer bears the burden of demonstrating that the dismissal was for valid reasons (disciplinary or otherwise) once a complaint proceeds.

Step 2: Work out your notice, pay in lieu, and severance entitlements

Separately from whether the dismissal was “unjust,” the Code sets minimum termination entitlements. An employer must give a minimum of two weeks’ written notice of termination, or pay wages in lieu. For an employee with at least three years of service, the minimum rises to one week per completed year of employment, up to a maximum of eight weeks, or pay in lieu of that notice. In addition, an employer terminating an employee with 12 or more consecutive months of continuous employment (other than for just cause) must pay severance equal to the greater of two days’ wages per completed year of employment, or five days’ wages. These entitlements apply regardless of whether the employee later files an unjust dismissal complaint. Employees themselves are not required by the Code to give notice of resignation, unless their employment contract says otherwise.

If 50 or more employees are terminated at a single industrial establishment, the employer must separately notify the Labour Program’s Head of Compliance and Enforcement in writing at least 16 weeks before the terminations take effect. This group-termination notice is a separate employer obligation and doesn’t change an individual employee’s own timelines below.

Step 3: Check whether you qualify to file an unjust dismissal complaint

To make an unjust dismissal complaint, an employee must have completed 12 consecutive months of continuous employment with the employer, and must not be a member of a group of employees covered by a collective agreement. Unionized employees who believe they were unjustly dismissed are expected to address the matter through their collective agreement’s grievance and arbitration procedures instead of this complaint route.

The unjust dismissal provisions have also been held by the courts to apply to constructive dismissal, meaning situations where the employer hasn’t directly fired the employee but has failed to comply with the employment contract in some major respect, or has unilaterally and substantially changed the terms of employment.

Not everything can be challenged this way: a genuine temporary layoff or permanent termination stemming from economic reasons, such as lack of work or discontinuance of a function, cannot be appealed under these provisions. That said, an employer cannot dismiss someone and then falsely claim lack of work or a changed work assignment as the reason.

Step 4: File the complaint within 90 days

A complaint must be made within 90 days from the date of the dismissal. It can be filed at any Labour Program office, by the dismissed employee directly or by a representative such as a lawyer. The complaint must identify the employee, state that the employee was dismissed, include the date of dismissal, and claim that the dismissal was unjust.

If a complaint was first made to another department or agency that had no authority to deal with it, and that initial complaint was made within the 90-day timeline, an extension of time to file with the Labour Program may be granted.

Separately, if the issue is unpaid wages owed following termination rather than the fairness of the dismissal itself, that kind of monetary complaint has its own deadline: it must be filed within 6 months from the last day the employer was required to pay.

Step 5 and 6: Mediation, then adjudication

Once a complaint is filed, the Labour Program first attempts to resolve it, which can include helping the parties settle through mediation. If the complaint isn’t resolved this way and was filed on or after July 29, 2019, it goes to the Canada Industrial Relations Board (CIRB) for adjudication.

If the Board finds the dismissal unjust, it can order the employer to reinstate the employee and take any other equitable remedial action to remedy or counteract the consequences of the dismissal, in addition to compensation. An adjudicator’s decision is final and cannot be appealed in court, though it may be subject to a limited application for review by the Federal Court in certain circumstances. The Labour Program pays for the adjudicator; the employee and employer are each responsible only for their own legal counsel costs if they choose to be represented by a lawyer.

Step 7: Know your parallel options

Filing a complaint under the Code does not prohibit an employee from also pursuing a civil wrongful dismissal action; adjudicators and the courts have concurrent jurisdiction over this area. That means an employee dismissed from federally regulated employment isn’t limited to a single track: the unjust dismissal complaint, a civil claim, and (for unpaid wages) a separate monetary complaint under s.251.01 can each be relevant depending on the circumstances.