Key New and Old Requirements When Hiring in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, and Québec

Introduction

Following a wave of new legislation in most provinces, employers in Canada must navigate a labyrinth of differing rules, many of them new, governing recruitment and hiring. Core themes include pay transparency, disclosure of job status, regulation of use of AI, protection of personal information in recruitment, language requirements, and liability for misrepresentations. This Employer Alert outlines mainly new and some longer standing hiring rules in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, and Québec.

The New Hiring Requirements

Pay Transparency

• British Columbia: The Pay Transparency Act requires salary ranges in job postings and bans questions about current or past pay. Employers with 50 or more employees must file annual gender pay gap reports by November 1, 2026. In addition, employers and recruiters may not ask candidates about their past pay.
• Ontario: Working for Workers Four Act, 2024 requires salary ranges in job postings, prohibits including requirements for Canadian work experience in postings or application forms, This requirement comes into force on January 1, 2026.Since 2023, employers and recruiters may not ask about past pay. In addition, as of that date, employers are prohibited from requiring “Canadian experience” in job postings or recruitment.
• Alberta and Quebec currently have no pay transparency statute.

Employment Standards Hiring Stage Obligations- the New and the Old

British Columbia – Employment Standards Act

• Section 8: No False Representations: Under this unique and seldom invoked section, Employers who make false representations about the availability of a position, the type of work, wages, or conditions of employment during hiring can be investigated and ordered to compensate the employee for the misrepresentation.
• Section 10: No Charge for Hiring or Providing Information – Employers and recruiters cannot charge fees to applicants for being hired or for providing information about job opportunities. This is particularly relevant to those recruiting foreign workers where the charging of fees is relatively common.

Alberta – The Employment Standards Code

• Section 127 – Premium for Employment Prohibited – Employers may not receive a payment directly or indirectly from a person for the purpose of employing that person. This provision protects workers, especially vulnerable job seekers, during the hiring stage, including from “pay-to-work” schemes and from hidden or unfair deductions.

Ontario – Working for Workers Four Act, 2024

• Under recently passed ESA amendments, effective January 1, 2026, employers must disclose in job postings if they use AI in hiring and must inform candidates of the status of their application within 45 days of the last interview. For larger employers and all recruiters, this means implementing software to issue or prompt review of whether a notice of status has been sent.

Quebec – Act Respecting Labour Standards

• Section 92.12 – No employer may charge a temporary foreign worker fees related to their recruitment, other than fees authorized under a Canadian government program.

Post Hire Obligations re Terms of Hire

B.C.: All new hires must receive a copy of the government mandated ESA summary.

Ontario: Employers have long been required to deliver a document summarizing ESA rights to all new hires. Under recent amendments, employers with over 25 employees must also communicate specified basic terms of employment on hiring. Some of the data required, such as where the employee will start work, is not always included in template employment agreements or letters of hire.

Quebec:  Employers are required to provide employees with an information document summarizing labour standards provided by the Commission des Normes du Travail.

Alberta: currently has no such requirement.

The Old: Human Rights Rules on Hiring

Each province has its own human rights legislation, which applies during hiring. The Human Rights Codes generally also prohibit discriminatory job advertisements, application forms, and interview questions. If employers become aware an employee has a protected characteristic, they must accommodate applicants to the point of undue hardship, both in the interview process and with respect to the job requirements themselves.

These statutes generally protect against discrimination based on grounds such as race, colour, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, marital and family status, and religion, and impose a duty on employers to accommodate individuals in both recruitment and employment unless doing so would cause undue hardship.

Ontario’s HRC goes further in specifically banning questions about protected ground status during hiring: e.g. are you married? In other provinces, asking is not banned per se but still = risky since it can then support an inference of discrimination.

Privacy in Recruitment

British Columbia and Alberta – Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA)
The PIPA defines “employee personal information” as personal information (“PI”) about an individual. Generally, employers are only entitled to collect, use or disclose PI which is reasonably related to the “establishment, management or termination” of the employment relationship and then only with the individual’s consent or, in some cases, with notice to him/her. For recruitment, this means the bulk of information received from or collected about candidates, including résumés, cover letters, references, interview notes, education and employment history, background checks, and test results, are PI and governed by PIPA.

Employers must:

• Collect only what is reasonably related to the job being filled for recruitment purposes. For example, an Alberta Privacy Commissioner decision held collecting credit history and rating information was not permissible for most jobs.
• Notify applicants of the reasons for collection and how the data will be used: with the advent of AI driven automation of early recruitment steps,  this requirement is being overlooked, with AI programmes pulling information on candidates available online with no notice such information is being collected, much less used for hiring.
• Securely safeguard, retain for a year and dispose of personal information: Recruiters receive huge volumes of personal information in applications and interviews. Many are not aware of their obligations to:
  1. safeguard this from wrongful access;
  2. keep all PI used to make a hiring decision for a year to allow a candidate to potentially access it; and
  3. then dispose of it securely unless there is a real business reason for retaining it e.g. you actually plan to review the unsuccessful candidate’s data for another role in future. Many recruiters and HR teams stockpile PI long past the point where it has any utility.

Québec – Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector
Québec imposes the strictest privacy rules for PI. Applicant data includes résumés, references, interview notes, testing results, and background check data.

• Personal information includes any information about an identifiable individual; “sensitive personal information” (medical, biometric, intimate) receives enhanced protection.
• Consent must be clear, free and informed and be given for specific purposes. Where sensitive personal information is involved, express consent is required.
• Collect only information necessary to assess suitability.
• Employers and their recruiters must inform applicants about use, storage, and retention.
• They must avoid requesting intrusive or unrelated data (e.g., health information unless job-related).

Ontario currently has no private sector privacy legislation but does have rules for provincial public sector employers in the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA).

Miscellaneous

Criminal Record Checks: For some jobs, typically roles working with children and vulnerable adults, pre-hire criminal record checks are mandatory. Some employers require them to gather information about the character of the candidate.

• BC, Ontario and Quebec’s Human Rights legislation bans denying the job on the basis of a criminal record “unrelated” to the job.
• Alberta’s Human Rights Act does not include criminal record as a protected ground.

Language: Quebec’s Charter of the French Language (Bill 96) creates obligations for all hiring communications from job postings through interviews to employment agreements to be in French, with strict protocols for using another language. For example, template-based employment agreements must be presented in French alongside the English version, even to candidates who prefer English. Employers with more than 25 employees must have a “francization” plan.

N.B. there are a wide variety of other workplace safety training requirements, including on bullying and harassment policies, as well as additional requirements for certain types of employees, such as Temporary Foreign Workers, that we do not have space to cover here.

Best Pan-Canadian Practises for Employers and Recruiters

For multi-provincial employers who want to meet all these standards, we recommend a full legal review of hiring practises and hiring data retention policies, including:

Draft Pay Transparency Compliant Job Ads which avoid references to protected grounds unless a bona fide occupational requirement. In Québec, publish French-first. Make sure a rate or range for base pay is stated. State whether AI will be used in the recruitment process. Do not ask candidates about past pay.

Avoid Misrepresenting the Job and Do Not Allow Recruiters to Charge, especially those recruiting foreigners to charge any fees to applicants for applying for a job.

Diarize deadlines for updating candidates who are interviewed: This upcoming Ontario requirement is good HR practise and public relations. Ensure all managers, HR or recruiters who do interviews are reminded to update all interviewees on the status of their application within 45 days of their last interview. In Ontario, failure to do so may lead to a fine of thousands of dollars.

Be Selective and Intentional about Collecting/Use/Retention of Candidate PI: Limit information collection to what is necessary for the specific job. Get written consent if collecting third party information such as social media scans or references checks from persons who are not nominated by the candidate.  Set deadlines for deleting old unsuccessful candidates PI after one year from the date of non-hire unless you really may consider them for a future opening.

Ensure all New Hires Receive Statutorily Mandated Information: Ensure employment agreements/letters of hire include all required basic data re work including data required by Ontario. In BC, Ontario and Quebec, send ESA summaries within 30 days.

If you want more information on this topic, you can contact us at:

Geoffrey Howard:      ghoward@howardlaw.ca

604 424-9686

Sebastian Chern:        schern@howardlaw.ca

604 424-9688