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If you’re enduring harassment, bullying, or a toxic work environment, your employer is failing its duty to keep you safe. When they ignore, minimize, or fail to properly investigate the problem, they’ve breached your employment contract — which may give you the right to claim constructive dismissal and full severance pay.
Under Alberta’s Occupational Health and Safety Act, your employer must have a harassment and violence prevention plan — and a legal duty to investigate and address complaints properly. Reasonable, good-faith management decisions aren’t harassment, even when they’re uncomfortable to hear. We see this most often in Calgary’s oil and gas field operations, hospitality, healthcare, and construction sites, where close quarters and high pressure make toxic dynamics harder to escape.
Harassment and bullying fall under the “Course of Conduct” branch of the Supreme Court of Canada’s Potter test. This means a series of harmful acts—or the employer’s failure to correct that harm—demonstrates an intent to abandon the contract. A “poisoned work environment” your employer fails to fix can meet that test — meaning you may be able to leave and still claim full severance. Don’t resign the moment things boil over: how and when you raise the issue, and how your employer responds, both matter enormously to the strength of your claim.
A tough boss is legal. A workplace that leaves you humiliated, unprotected, and undefended by a proper investigation is not. We treat an employer’s failure to investigate harassment exactly like we’d treat any other breach of your employment contract — because that’s exactly what it is.
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Workplace challenges can be difficult to navigate alone. Our firm is committed to helping employees understand their rights and find the right path forward.
We assess whether the conduct meets the legal definition of harassment, whether it forms a course of conduct under the Potter test, and whether your employer’s investigation — if one happened at all — met the minimum standards the law demands: timely, impartial, and procedurally fair to both sides.
Where the investigation was biased, negligent, or simply never happened, we treat that failure the same way we’d treat any other breach of your employment contract — as grounds for a constructive dismissal claim with full severance, not just an internal HR complaint.
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Employment Law Advocates made a stressful situation so much easier to navigate. Their team was responsive, knowledgeable, and fought hard to secure the outcome I deserved.
Employment Law Advocates made a stressful situation so much easier to navigate. Their team was responsive, knowledgeable, and fought hard to secure the outcome I deserved.
We work with employees from all backgrounds who need trusted legal guidance during difficult workplace situations, including severance package reviews and wrongful dismissal claims.
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