In Pasche v MDE Enterprises ( 2018 BCSC 701) Justice MacDonald awarded only 13 months notice to a 67 year old estimator with 18 years service .
Having first determined that the plaintiff was a dependant contractor and not an independent contractor, in deciding how much notice of termination he was entitled to the Judge said the following :
110 After reviewing the numerous cases, I award the plaintiff 13 months’ notice. This is because I have found that the plaintiff is a dependent contractor rather than an employee and is therefore entitled to less notice than if he were an employee.
This is not the law in Ontario where the Court of Appeal has made it clear that dependant contractors are entitled to the same notice as employees . ( See Keenan v Canac Kitchens 2016 ONCA 79 where the Court awarded 26 months to a dependant contractor)
In this BC case the Judge gave no policy rationale for why a dependant contractor should get less notice than a regular employee. This distinction is even more unfair as the evidence showed that at this workplace some of the estimators were treated as contractors and some were treated as employees.