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BC Labour Relations Code review now open for comment
In June 2025, the Government of British Columbia released a report of the Labour Relations Code Review Panel (the Panel).
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Canada | Publication | August 2019
Bills C-44 and C-86 bring a suite of amendments that confer greater authority on the Canada Industrial Relations Board (the CIRB) to adjudicate certain employment disputes under Part II and Part III of the Canada Labour Code. These changes provide a centralized avenue for employees to have their complaints dealt with, rather than having each complaint under the Code adjudicated differently, as was the case prior to these amendments coming into force.
Increased Powers for the CIRB
As of July 29, 2019, the CIRB is responsible for dealing with:
The CIRB’s new powers also include the ability to suspend and reject complaints made under Part III of the Code, and restrict a person from using multiple recourse mechanisms for the same matter (e.g., simultaneously filing an unjust dismissal, a genetic discrimination, and a reprisal complaint under the Code).
The new amendments give the Minister authority to order an employer to conduct an internal audit of its practices to determine if the employer is in compliance with Part III and report the results to the Minister. An inspector may issue a compliance order or a payment order if it determines that the employer is contravening a provision of Part III of the Code, which includes many changes to hours of work and new paid leaves coming in force on September 1, 2019.
In addition to the issues discussed above, a number of new changes related to compliance and enforcement are expected to come in force in 2020, including:
The amendments discussed above are largely procedural, but should not be ignored by employers as they introduce significant consequences for failure to comply with the Code. While the monetary penalties and public names repercussions are not anticipated to come in force until 2020, it may be prudent for employers to take proactive steps to ensure their workplaces are compliant with the Code and avoid the risk of being subjected to the enforcement measures discussed above.
For more detailed information on the September 1, 2019, amendments to Part III of the Code specifically, please refer to our Federal Employment and Labour Guide for Employers here.
Publication
In June 2025, the Government of British Columbia released a report of the Labour Relations Code Review Panel (the Panel).
Publication
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) recently issued a decision rehearing Application No. 16/319,040 (DeepMind Technologies Ltd.; the Application) and maintained that all claims remain rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 and § 103.
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In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we discussed two recent US decisions (Anthropic and Meta), which found that the unauthorized use of copyright-protected books to train large language models (LLMs) was fair use.
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