Glossary

In Migrant workers

If you’re a temporary foreign worker in Canada, financial abuse means that your employer does things like:

• not pay you when they’re supposed to
• take your money
• make you do something with your money or credit cards that you don’t want to do
• charge you fees for to hire you or to find you other work

In Employment and Work, Income Assistance

Financial assistance is money you get from Ontario Works (OW) to help pay for living expenses, like housing and food.

It also helps pay for some prescription drugs and may help pay for some dental services. And some people can get:

• extra money to help pay for a special diet
• other benefits, such as costs for travelling to medical appointments

In Employment and Work

First aid means treating yourself or having someone at work treat you. Some examples are:

• cleaning minor cuts, scrapes, or scratches
• treating a minor burn
• applying bandages, a cold compress, or an ice bag
• putting on a splint at your workplace

First aid also includes changing a bandage at a follow-up appointment if this does not lead to further treatment.

In Debt and Consumer Rights, Employment and Work, Tribunals and Courts

Garnishment is one option for getting money from someone if they did not obey a court order to pay you. To do this, you have to fill out forms and follow the rules of the court that apply to this process.

You might be able to get money from:

• someone’s bank account
• payments they get, like rent cheques from a tenant
• their wages if they’re employed

There are some things that usually cannot be garnished, like:

• employment insurance
• social assistance
• pensions (unless the creditor is a government agency)

In Employment and Work, Human rights at work, Human Rights, Types of discrimination

A grievance is an official complaint by a union against an employer. Grievances are decided by arbitrators, who are private judges hired by the union and the employer. Arbitrators hear your complaint and decide whether it happened. If you win, the arbitrator can order your employer to pay you money, change workplace rules, or stop doing something that’s not fair to you.

In Employment and Work, Housing Law, Human Rights

Ontario’s laws say that harassment happens when someone says or does things that they know, or should know, will bother you. This could be because what is said or done is offensive, embarrassing, humiliating, demeaning, or not welcome. This usually has to happen more than once to be considered harassment, but a single incident can be considered harassment if it causes you to feel very uncomfortable.

Harassment can include sending emails, posting materials or pictures, making jokes or other comments about:

• your race, gender identity, gender expression, sex, disability, sexual orientation, religion, or age
• things like the way you dress, how you talk, or your religious practices
• in housing law, if you are receiving social assistance
• in employment law, your record of criminal offences

Harassment like this goes against human rights laws and is a kind of discrimination. For example, if an employer harasses you because of your record of criminal offences or a landlord harasses you because you are on welfare.

Harassment is also against the laws that protect a workers’ health and safety, and the laws that protect tenants. 

In Employment and Work

In most jobs, people get public holidays off with holiday pay. To figure out your holiday pay:

• add up your earnings, which are your regular wages plus vacation pay, for the 4 work weeks before the work week with the holiday in it
• divide that total by 20

In Employment and Work

Under the Employment Standards Act, homeworkers are employees who do work out of their own homes for an employer. Examples of homework are sewing, stuffing envelopes, online research, answering calls for a call centre, and telemarketing.

In Employment and Work

Insurable employment means that you’re doing a job that’s covered by Employment Insurance (EI). Most jobs are covered if you’re an employee. This applies even if you do not have a written contract. And it does not matter how you’re paid, for example, if you get a salary or are paid by the hour. If you work for yourself, you’re usually not covered. But there are situations where you might be.

In Employment and Work

Insurable hours are the hours you worked doing a job covered by Employment Insurance (EI). You must work a certain number of insurable hours to get EI benefits. How many hours you must work depends on the type of EI benefits that you’re applying for. For example, you must usually work for at least 600 hours to get sickness benefits.