enforceability of termination clauses

The Ontario Court of Appeal weighed in, to some extent, on the hot issue of enforceability of termination clauses in a recent decision. In this case, the clause at issue was written in French. The Applicant argued that the Motion Judge’s interpretation of the clause only referred to “notice” and not “severance” and therefore the termination clause was an unlawful attempt to contract out of the Employment Standards Act because it did not expressly provide for the payment of severance and there are a number of cases suggesting such clauses are void.