No — the headcount, the window, what gets aggregated, and what the notice replaces or stacks on top of all differ by province, sometimes sharply.
Short answer
Ontario’s ESA s.58(1) triggers at 50 or more employees terminated at one establishment within four weeks, and once triggered it replaces the individual notice table with a flat 8/12/16-week band keyed to headcount. Nova Scotia’s Labour Standards Code triggers at just ten in four weeks. Saskatchewan’s threshold is 25, and its group notice runs “in addition to” individual notice rather than replacing it. None of these numbers or structures can be assumed from another province’s playbook.
“Establishment” is a defined term, not an address: separate locations in the same municipality count as one establishment, so terminations a buyer has modelled as two comfortably-small reductions can combine into one group-notice trigger. And s.58(4) provides that notice “shall be deemed not to have been given until the Director receives” the prescribed information — so every day between the decision and the filing is added to the end of the plan, not absorbed by it.
Labour Standards Code s.72(2) triggers at “ten or more persons in an establishment within any period of four weeks or less” — a fifth of Ontario’s floor. Section 75(1) then requires the notice to be served “personally or by registered mail” on each employee; the Minister is only informed afterward under s.75(2), which is close to the inverse of Ontario’s regulator-filing model.
The Saskatchewan Employment Act s.2-62(1) opens “In addition to the requirements of section 2-60” and triggers at 25 or more employees in four weeks — the opposite structural relationship from Ontario’s “Despite”-worded s.58(1). Satisfying the group filing there does not touch the separate individual notice each employee is still owed under section 2-60; a model that treats the group filing as the whole cost of the reduction leaves the individual entitlement unpaid.
Canada Labour Code s.212(1) requires 16 weeks’ flat notice to the Head at 50 or more terminations in four weeks, with no scaling by headcount. Alberta’s Employment Standards Code s.137(1) requires only 4 weeks’ notice to the Minister at the same 50-employee threshold, with no employee notice period at all built into that section.
The municipal-aggregation and filing-delay traps decided two sites, one municipality, and a group termination. Nova Scotia’s lower threshold is the subject of ten terminations in Nova Scotia that crossed a threshold the Ontario playbook missed. Saskatchewan’s stacking rule decided a Saskatchewan group termination notice that stacked instead of replaced.
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