An Aug. 6 Ontario Court of Appeal ruling upheld two employment termination clauses from paired Baker cases, including language allowing dismissal “at any time” and “at any time and for any reason.”
The court said contracts must be read in context, not invalidated over hypothetical statutory breaches, rejecting the lower-court split that had treated similar wording as potentially unlawful.
That narrows a line of employee claims that surged after the original 2025 Baker decision, when dismissed workers increasingly argued minor phrasing defects voided contracts and triggered common-law notice awards.
The ruling still preserves core employee protections: employers cannot contract out of minimum statutory entitlements, and genuine ambiguity in termination language must be resolved in the employee’s favor.