Saskatchewan's Lieutenant Governor has approved an Order in Council setting January 1, 2026, as the date in which Bill No. 5 will come into force. This Bill contains a number of notable amendments to The Saskatchewan Employment Act (SEA) that will take effect at the start of the new year.
At a high level, some of the notable changes to the SEA include:
- Restrictions on when medical certificates can be requested for employees who are absent from work due to illness or injury (either their own or that of an immediate family member)
- Prohibitions on withholding or deducting gratuities or "tips" from employees and regulatory authority to establish conditions that must be met for a tip pooling arrangement
- Expanded protected long-term sick leave and interpersonal violence leave, and more flexibility for bereavement leave and access to maternity leave
- Providing employers the option of defining a "day" as an individual calendar day or to continue using the existing 24-hour period definition for overtime purposes
- New categories of permissible deductions from wages
- Expanded authority of the Director of Employment Standards to issue remedies in discriminatory action complaints
- Clarification that employers do not have to provide vacation pay on the period for which statutory pay-in-lieu of termination notice is being provided
For a more detailed list of the upcoming changes, please see our previously updated article that laid out these changes in detail.
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