Separating The "Apples" From The "Oranges" – When Can Paid Time Off Benefits Replace Personal Emergency Leave?

On January 1 of this year, Ontario's Bill 148 officially expanded the reach of the personal emergency leave provisions of the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (the ESA) to not only  require all Ontario employers to grant employees 10 personal emergency leave days (PEL days) per year but to require that the first two such PEL days be paid. For Ontario employers already offering employees related, but not identical, paid time off benefits at the time, this naturally led to a number of critical questions: are we already compliant with the ESA? do we need to change the benefits we offer or how we administer them? do we need to pay even more?

While we are now more than six months out from the coming into force of this ESA amendment, the answers are still less than clear. What limited jurisprudence there is out there consists of labour arbitration decisions arising from disputes in unionized workplaces where employee entitlements are often codified in negotiated collective