An employee who has spent 37 years building a career is told the job is over. They're 62, experienced and reasonably well paid. The employer looks at the compensation package and assumes that retirement is already close enough to make a shorter notice period sensible. The employee sees something else entirely. They had planned to keep working, and the specialized position they occupied may not exist outside that business. Both perspectives explain why dismissals near retirement have generated unusually difficult disputes in Canadian employment law. Age matters. So does the prospect of comparable employment. But neither a birthday nor a projected retirement date tells a court exactly how much notice is reasonable. What the law has been trying to measure The Canadian common law of reasonable notice doesn't compensate someone for every year they expected to remain employed. Unless a lawful contract changes the default, the common law ordinarily requires an employer terminating without cause to give reasonable working notice or compensation in lieu.
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