Pre-Employment Contracts

In certain cases, the statements of an Employer in the pre-hiring stage can form the basis of an agreement which is completely separate from the person's terms of employment. For example, where a person was recruited by a Canadian employer in the United Kingdom, and was told that if he/she moved to Ontario to accept the employment, he/she would be employed for at least 2 years, but was laid off several months after he/she arrived in Ontario due to the seniority provisions of a collective agreement, the Court awarded him/her damages for breach of the original agreement he/she had with the company and which induced him/her to move to Canada.

The small number of cases in which courts have awarded damages for pre-employment contracts have almost all involved circumstances in which the Employer assured the Employee that they would be employed for a minimum period of time and they were ultimately terminated within the period of "guaranteed employment".

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