The Court of Appeal for Ontario’s decision in Baker v. Van Dolder’s Home Team Inc., 2026 ONCA 568 makes me want to leave the practice of law. Not just employment law, but the entire profession.
While that opening is melodramatic, I have always had a penchant for theatrics. Moreover, the only way to properly describe my reaction to the Court’s decision is existential.
A little over six years ago I wrote a blog post, which I titled Employment Law Isn't Real. In that post, I suggested that if employment law was not real, then the Court of Appeal’s decision in Waksdale v. Swegon North America Inc., 2020 ONCA 391 (CanLII) is wrong.
The point of that post was to argue, of course, that Employment Law is real. By which I mean that it is a distinct body of law with its own jurisprudence and analytical framework. For the sake of completeness, and as I have confirmed many times, I agree with the Court’s decision and analytical approach in Waksdale.
The Court of Appeal’s recent decisions in Baker and Li v. Wayfair Canada ULC., released concurrently but not included in the citation, suggest otherwise. Those decisions seem to prove the argument that Employment Law is Not Real.
But it is. Employment Law is real.
Employment Law is not simply applied contracts. If I am wrong in that understanding, then perhaps I should not be in this profession. Perhaps I should tread the boards again.
