Prior service comes with the people. Alberta’s Employment Standards Code, section 5 deems employment continuous when a business is sold, leased, transferred or merged, so the buyer inherits the years the seller accumulated and notice is measured on the combined total. Alberta has no statutory severance pay at all, which makes the inherited number far smaller than Ontario’s.
Key takeaways
SECTION 01 OF 10
The Employment Standards Code, RSA 2000 c.E-9, marginal note Employment deemed continuous, is one sentence: “For the purposes of this Act, the employment of an employee is deemed to be continuous and uninterrupted when a business, undertaking or other activity or part of it is sold, leased, transferred or merged or if it continues to operate under a receiver or receiver-manager.”
There is no second subsection, no definitions and no exception. Alberta Employment Standards puts it on its termination page: “When a business changes ownership and the employee continues to work for the business, the employee retains all previous length of service.” That is a departmental position, not the provision. Treadstone Law covers the Alberta deal mechanics.
SECTION 02 OF 10
Ontario’s equivalent, Employment Standards Act, 2000 section 9, is built around a sale; subsection (3) says “sells” includes leases, transfers or disposes of in any other manner. Alberta names two events Ontario’s section 9 does not: a merger, and a business that “continues to operate under a receiver or receiver-manager”.
A buyer taking a going concern out of an Alberta receivership is reading a statute that has already treated employment through the receiver’s period as unbroken; see a distressed acquisition. Alberta also reaches “part of it”, so a buyer of one division is inside the section — the question Treadstone Law asks about buying only some contracts.
SECTION 03 OF 10
Ontario gives buyers a way out. Section 9(2): “Subsection (1) does not apply if the day on which the purchaser hires the employee is more than 13 weeks after the earlier of his or her last day of employment with the seller and the day of the sale.” See our Ontario sibling.
Alberta’s section 5 contains no equivalent window. The Code’s two 90-day bridges are about the same employer, not a purchaser. Section 54: “when an employee has been employed by the same employer more than once, the periods of employment with that employer are considered to be one period of employment if not more than 90 days has elapsed between the periods of employment”.
So an Alberta buyer planning a shutdown and a rehire has no timing answer in the statute: the thirteen-week limit Treadstone Law calls the one real timing constraint is Ontario’s.
SECTION 04 OF 10
Section 56, marginal note Employer’s termination notice, requires written notice of at least one week above 90 days, two weeks from two years, four from four, five from six, six from eight, and “8 weeks, if the employee has been employed by the employer for 10 years or more”.
Ontario climbs a week at a time. Section 57 tops out at “at least eight weeks before the termination, if the employee’s period of employment is eight years or more”, and pays three weeks at “three years or more and fewer than four years”.
Alberta’s statutory notice never exceeds Ontario’s at any length of service. They match at two, four and ten-plus years; everywhere else Alberta is lower — two weeks against three at three years, five against seven at seven, six against eight at nine.
SECTION 05 OF 10
This is the difference that moves money. Across the full consolidated Employment Standards Code — 108 pages, current as of 26 November 2025 — the word severance appears zero times. There is no payroll threshold, no multiplier and no cap, because there is no entitlement to cap. Alberta Employment Standards agrees on the same page: “Severance pay is determined under common law and not required under the Employment Standards Code.”
Ontario is the contrast. Section 64(1): “An employer who severs an employment relationship with an employee shall pay severance pay to the employee if the employee was employed by the employer for five years or more” and, on one route, “the employer has a payroll of $2.5 million or more” — capped at twenty-six weeks by section 65(5), as our sibling on statutory severance sets out. Treadstone Law treats termination and severance pay as two entitlements; Alberta has only the first.
SECTION 06 OF 10
Section 57(1), marginal note Termination pay, lets an employer pay “termination pay of an amount at least equal to the wages the employee would have earned if the employee had worked the regular hours of work for the applicable termination notice period”. For variable earners, subsection (3) averages “the previous 13 weeks in which the employee worked” — weeks worked, not calendar ones.
A buyer closing on a business with people already laid off inherits a running clock. Section 63(1): “The employment of an employee who is laid off for one or more periods exceeding, in total, 90 days within a 120-day period terminates, and termination pay is payable”. What falls due is measured on the combined service section 5 preserved, and section 64 makes recall formal: written notice, a seven-day return, nothing owed if the employee stays away. See Treadstone Law on a layoff the seller started.
SECTION 07 OF 10
Section 34(1), marginal note Basic vacation entitlement, requires “2 weeks after each of the first 4 years of employment”, rising to three weeks — and, under section 34.2, six per cent of wages instead of four — once five consecutive years are complete.
Because section 5 carries the service across, an employee who passed five years under the seller arrives already at that rate: a permanent step in cost no payroll file flags. See accrued vacation and banked time.
SECTION 08 OF 10
A buyer of an Alberta trades or utilities contractor should read the Employment Standards Regulation, Alta Reg 14/1997, first. Section 5, marginal note No notice of termination, provides that no notice or termination pay “is required to be given or paid by an employer to terminate the employment of an employee if” the employee works “at the site of and in the construction, erection, repair, remodelling, alteration, painting, interior decoration or demolition” of a building, road, pipeline or power line.
Two carve-outs pull people back in: the exemption does not reach an employee who “is employed to perform ongoing maintenance” or who “is employed as an office employee”. Site crews may be exempt while estimators and service technicians are not. Ontario’s version turns on a defined term instead: O. Reg. 288/01 simply lists “A construction employee”.
SECTION 09 OF 10
Section 137, marginal note Group termination: “an employer who intends to terminate the employment of 50 or more employees at a single location within a 4-week period must give the Minister written notice at least 4 weeks before the date on which the first termination is to take effect”, with seasonal and definite-term staff excluded.
That obligation runs to the Minister; the individual entitlement is untouched. Alberta Employment Standards states it plainly — “Group notice to the affected employees is not required but employers must provide individual termination notices to affected employees.” Ontario does the opposite: section 58(1) overrides the individual ladder for 50 or more at one establishment in the same four-week period. An Alberta buyer restructuring a workforce owes the province a letter; an Ontario buyer owes the employees more weeks (Treadstone Law).
SECTION 10 OF 10
Take each employee you intend to keep, use the seller’s hire date, and run section 56 on the combined total. On parameters of my own choosing rather than data — eleven years’ service at closing, $1,400 of regular weekly wages — Alberta’s answer is eight weeks, so $11,200, and the arithmetic stops there. The same worker on the same numbers in Ontario draws eight weeks of notice plus, where the payroll test is met, eleven weeks of severance: $26,600. On those figures the Alberta statutory exposure is about 42 per cent of the Ontario one.
Then stop treating the Code as the ceiling. Section 4 makes an agreement that the Act does not apply “against public policy and void”, and section 3(1) preserves “any civil remedy of an employee or an employer”. Alberta Employment Standards is explicit that a terminated employee “may be entitled to more than the minimum amount of termination notice or pay required under employment standards legislation”. Our sibling on common-law notice exposure explains where the real number lands.
The diligence list is therefore short: true hire dates, not payroll-system dates; anyone on layoff and where they sit in the 90-in-120 count; site trades separated from office staff before anyone leans on the construction exemption; and the contracts read, because a defective termination clause removes the statutory cap. Treadstone Law on undisclosed severance liabilities, employee indemnities and not keeping someone covers that side, Ontario-framed. Two boundaries and one gap: this is Alberta law and describes no other province; a federally regulated business sits outside the Code under section 2(2)(b), where our sibling on federal continuity applies; and section 5, unlike Ontario’s section 9(1), says nothing about whether the purchaser must hire the employee — I found no Alberta authority on that silence, so neither does this page.
No. Ontario’s section 9(2) lets a purchaser avoid continuity if it hires the employee more than 13 weeks after the sale or the employee’s last day. Alberta’s section 5 has no equivalent window — its two 90-day bridges apply only to the same employer, not a purchaser, so an Alberta buyer planning a shutdown and rehire has no timing escape in the statute.
No. The word severance appears zero times across the full Employment Standards Code, and Alberta Employment Standards confirms severance pay is determined under common law and not required under the Code. Ontario, by contrast, requires severance pay at five years’ service where the employer meets the payroll test, capped at 26 weeks.
No. Alberta’s group-termination rule is a filing obligation to the Minister at least four weeks before the first termination, with the individual entitlement untouched — group notice to the affected employees is not itself required. Ontario works the opposite way: its rule for 50 or more employees overrides and increases the individual notice ladder.
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