Holidays on Sunday

When is “Canada Day”? How about “New Year’s Day” or “Christmas”? Like all good legal questions, the answer, it would appear, is “it depends.”

Pursuant to subsection 1(1) of the Employment Standards Act, 2000 the following days are designated as “public holidays”, to which certain rights and obligations apply:

1. New Year’s Day.
2. Family Day, being the third Monday in February.
3. Good Friday.
4. Victoria Day.
5. Canada Day.
6. Labour Day.
7. Thanksgiving Day.
8. Christmas Day.
9. December 26.

Of those, the only calendar days that one could derive with any certainty (and without knowledge of what those days mean) are "Family Day" and December 26.

So when is “Canada Day” anyway?

Bill 148 and Changes to the Employment Standards Act, 2000

On November 22, 2017, the Ontario Government passed Bill 148, the Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, 2017, S.O. 2017 C.22. The Bill received Royal Assent on November 27, 2017.

This post focuses primarily on the Employment Standards Act, 2000 and the implications to Ontario employment law, rather than labour law.

UPDATE: Nearly one year later to the day, November 21, 2018, the Ontario Government, now under a Conservative government, passed Bill 47, the Making Ontario Open for Business Act, 2018, S.O. 2018, C.14. A major effect of Bill 47 was to undo much, but not all of what had been introduced by Bill 148. For a summary of the changes made by Bill 47, see my post Bill 47 - The Making Ontario Open for Business Act, 2018.

A Call for the Celebration of Boxing Day

(c) istock/DragonImages

Here is a controversial statement: Boxing Day is far more deserving of public holiday status than is Christmas Day. Who would dare say such a thing? I would.

Before researching the subject of Boxing Day, I had planned to argue for its removal from the list of designated public holidays in Ontario. I intended to propose that the public holiday be moved from December 26 to a Friday in June for essentially three reasons:

1. Few people know the significance of Boxing Day;
2. There are already too many holidays between December 25 and January 1; and
3. The month of June sure could use a ‘stat.’

All of those points remain valid. The month of June really could use a long weekend and three holidays in one week sure does seem like a lot. All of which leads me to conclude that perhaps Christmas Day should no longer be a statutory public holiday. (For more of my thoughts on this subject see my earlier post Opinion: Seeking Retail Honesty.) I’ll probably write more about that subject later, but I am serious when I say that I would honestly propose to remove Christmas Day from the list of statutory public holidays – especially if it was in favour of a June long weekend.

I know what you are likely now thinking, ‘you are proposing to remove Christmas Day from the list of public holidays, but Boxing Day, the day on which we now lineup in the wee morning hours to buy electronics, should remain a designated public holiday?!’

Trust me, once you understand the historical significance of Boxing Day, you will agree that the day is far more deserving of public holiday status than is Christmas Day.

Opinion: Seeking Retail Honesty

Can we all be honest with one another for a moment? Yesterday’s fight over which retail establishments could open and which could not was about one issue and one issue only: which businesses had the right to make money yesterday and which were precluded.

Some have taken the position that the rules on who can open are arbitrary. The rules are not arbitrary; they are clearly deliberate. The law establishes clear criteria on the tourism criteria that must be met before a municipality may pass an exempting by-law under subsection 4 (1) of the Retail Business Holidays Act. The law is about economics. The clearest proof of that point, I would suggest, is the omission of Boxing Day from the enumeration of holidays in the Retail Business Holidays Act; it is a “holiday” in several other statutes including the Employment Standards Act, 2000.

Right to Refuse to Work Comes at a Cost to Employee

If an employee asserts his right, as guaranteed under the Ontario Employment Standards Act, 2000, not to work on a holiday or on a Sunday, must the employer provide him with a substitute for the hours he otherwise could have worked?

In a decision from the Ontario Labour Relations Board, Farinha v Highland Farms Inc, 2014 CanLII 17466 (ON LRB), the answer was “no.”

Employees and The Ontario Retail Business Holidays Act

As a general statement of law, it is illegal for a retail business to be open on a holiday. Of course, there are numerous exemptions to this rule; the most well-known of which being the ‘tourist area’ exemption. What many people may not know, however, is that the legal onus is on the store’s employees to restrain members of the public from buying goods.

Have employees been convicted of allowing the public to shop on a holiday? They have.

Any Day can be a Holiday

Earlier this month I blogged about the nine “public holidays” under Ontario law and how the Civic Holiday, Remembrance Day, and Easter Sunday were not such holidays, see Public Holidays under the Ontario Employment Standards Act. 

It has occurred to me that I may have mistakenly left some readers with the impression that no Ontario employee was entitled to those days off as a holiday. That too is incorrect.

Public Holidays under the Ontario Employment Standards Act

For most workers in Ontario, the first Monday in August and Easter Monday are paid days off work. However, neither is a “public holiday” as defined by the Ontario Employment Standards Act, 2000. What that means is that the rules surrounding statutory holiday pay do not apply to “the Civic holiday” or to “Easter Monday.” But, that does not necessarily mean that they cannot be treated by any particular employer as a ‘holiday;' on this point see the post Any Day Can be a Holiday.

The points above provide an opening to discuss what the rules surrounding such holidays actually are.