Maybe. “Just cause” is a high bar. Employers often allege cause, but many cause terminations don’t hold up under scrutiny.
If cause is weak, the employer may still owe severance (and alleging cause improperly can create additional risk for them). Often employers will be overly aggressive in asserting just cause when they do not actually have just cause. In Ontario, just cause is often seen as the equivalent of the death penalty in that it is a very high threshold.
An employer who incorrectly asserts just cause may owe you a longer severance package than otherwise.
The courts have now established that where cause is alleged unsuccessfully that the employee is entitled to the outer end of the notice period.
See: Lin v. Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, 2016 ONCA 619 (CanLII), https://canlii.ca/t/gsw03
[53] “The trial judge did not determine an appropriate period of reasonable notice, and then increase the period as a result of bad faith conduct by the employer. Rather, he established a range of 12 to 15 months for reasonable notice, and selected the higher end of that range because of the difficulty Lin would encounter in securing comparable employment as an investment professional as a result of the termination of his employment “under an ethical cloud”.
[54] This was a relevant consideration in determining reasonable notice. At its foundation, reasonable notice is the period of time it should reasonably take the terminated employee to find comparable employment”
Also see: Johar v Best Buy Canada, 2016 ONSC 5287 (CanLII),
[27] “In my view, the most reasonable range on the facts herein is probably 10 to 11 months. I agree with the plaintiff that two factors – his age[9] and the fact that he was dismissed for cause (with no letter of reference) – justify a notice period “at the outer end” of what is reasonable to “reflect the additional challenge of finding replacement employment.”[10] I therefore find that the plaintiff was entitled to 11 months notice.”
