Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Characterization of the end of employment was central, namely whether Denis Morin truly resigned on 1 March 2023 or was in fact dismissed, triggering protections under the Loi sur les normes du travail.
• The Tribunal administratif du travail’s remedial powers, including reinstatement and compensation for lost salary and benefits, were challenged without clear analysis by the employer of the contract’s fixed term versus possible renewal.
• Interpretation of Morin’s 2021 employment contract, drafted for three years with an annual renewal clause, raised issues as to whether the contract was still in force when the TAT awarded reinstatement and monetary indemnity.
• Email exchanges between counsel on 23 October 2025 created a dispute over whether there was a binding agreement or enforceable consent by Morin to a stay of execution of the TAT decision.
• The employer’s application for a stay turned on whether there was a serious appearance of right, serious or irreparable prejudice, and a balance of convenience favouring suspension of the TAT’s decision pending judicial review.
• Alleged workplace tensions and the return of a former supervisor were found too speculative to constitute a serious prejudice justifying a stay of Morin’s reinstatement and the monetary relief ordered by the TAT.

Factual background

Denis Morin was employed by Location Multi-Équipements inc. as a rental representative under a written employment contract signed in February 2021. The contract provided for a duration of three years and stipulated an annual remuneration of $90,000 for the first year, with no bonus. It also contained a clause that the contract would renew annually on the same conditions, subject to possible amendments agreed between the parties, and it required three weeks’ written notice in the event of resignation. Morin’s difficulties at work came to a head following conflict with his supervisor, Marcel Dessureault. On 1 March 2023, Morin attended a meeting where his superiors handed him a notice of suspension without pay. During that meeting, he made statements that the employer later characterized as a voluntary resignation. Before the meeting, he had erased the contents of his mobile phone, anticipating possible suspension or dismissal. The employer treated the employment relationship as having ended by resignation.

Complaints under the Loi sur les normes du travail

In April 2023, Morin filed two complaints under the Loi sur les normes du travail (LNT) against Location Multi-Équipements inc. The first, under section 122 LNT, alleged that he had been dismissed as a reprisal for exercising a right protected by the statute. The second, under section 124 LNT, alleged that he had been dismissed without just and sufficient cause. The employer maintained that no dismissal had occurred because Morin had resigned of his own accord at the 1 March 2023 meeting after receiving the suspension notice. The characterization of that meeting—resignation versus dismissal—became a key factual and legal issue before the Tribunal administratif du travail (TAT).

The TAT’s decision on dismissal, reinstatement and indemnity

On 26 September 2025, the TAT issued its decision on Morin’s complaints. It conducted its analysis using the criteria recognized in Québec case law for determining whether an employee has truly resigned, including the clarity of the resignation, the context, and the parties’ conduct before and after the alleged resignation. The TAT concluded that, despite the words Morin used during the 1 March 2023 meeting, he did not genuinely intend to resign. Instead, it found that he had effectively been dismissed by the employer. As a result, the TAT allowed both of his LNT complaints. As part of the remedies, the TAT ordered Location Multi-Équipements inc. to reinstate Morin to his position and to pay him an indemnity to compensate for the salary and benefits he lost because of the dismissal. The tribunal reserved its jurisdiction to determine any further appropriate remedial measures and to address any implementation difficulties arising from its decision. The TAT’s reasoning addressed the three-year contractual term and the renewal clause only briefly in the background, noting that Morin had signed a three-year contract in 2021 with annual renewal on the same conditions. However, it did not explicitly determine whether the contract was one of fixed term or indefinite duration, nor did it clearly analyze whether the contract remained in force in 2025 when it ordered reinstatement and compensation. That gap later became one of the employer’s main lines of attack in judicial review.

Judicial review proceedings and the application for a stay

Unhappy with the TAT’s findings and the ordered remedies, Location Multi-Équipements inc. filed an application for judicial review in the Superior Court of Québec, seeking to have the TAT’s decision annulled on the standard of reasonableness set out in the Supreme Court of Canada’s Vavilov framework. At the same time, the employer sought a stay (sursis) of execution of the TAT’s decision pending final judgment on the merits of the judicial review. Under Québec civil procedure, filing for judicial review does not automatically suspend an administrative decision; a stay is an exceptional, discretionary remedy that requires satisfaction of three cumulative criteria: an arguable appearance of right showing a potential weakness in the challenged decision; a risk of serious or irreparable prejudice if the stay is not granted; and a balance of convenience favouring the suspension.

The alleged consent to a stay and the question of an “entente”

Before the stay hearing, counsel for the parties exchanged emails on 23 October 2025. Morin’s lawyer indicated that his client would consent to the employer’s request for a stay to be presented on 20 November 2025, but only upon two cumulative conditions: that Morin would not waive any of his rights, and that the employer would continue to remunerate him until settlement if no review was granted. The employer’s counsel answered that the consent to a stay would not entail any renunciation by Morin of his right to be paid any sums he might ultimately be entitled to if the judicial review were dismissed. However, the employer never agreed to the second condition of ongoing remuneration during the proceedings. Later, on 19 November 2025, Morin’s counsel wrote that he was withdrawing his consent to the stay, criticizing the employer’s proposed schedule on the merits as long and dilatory. On the morning of 20 November, before the stay hearing, Morin’s counsel clarified that he did not object to suspending the reinstatement per se but would insist that the employer pay Morin’s salary during that period. The employer argued in Superior Court that Morin’s lawyer’s original email amounted either to a binding admission (aveu) or to an enforceable agreement to a stay. The judge rejected both characterizations. An admission must relate to a fact, not a point of law, and whether a stay should issue is a legal question. As for an “entente” or agreement, the evidence did not show a meeting of minds on all essential conditions, particularly on the crucial requirement that Morin be paid throughout the proceedings. Since the employer never accepted that second condition and in fact did not continue paying Morin, there was no binding agreement preventing Morin from contesting the stay request.

Appearance of right and the standard of review

On the first criterion—appearance of right—the Superior Court recognized that the employer faced a high threshold on the merits because the judicial review would be assessed under the reasonableness standard. The reviewing judge will be required to show deference to the TAT’s factual findings and reasoning and must not reassess the evidence except in exceptional circumstances. Within that framework, the judge accepted that one of the employer’s grounds did raise an arguable weakness: the TAT had ordered reinstatement and monetary compensation in 2025 without determining clearly whether Morin’s three-year contract, with its renewal clause, remained in force at that time. The TAT’s reasons referred to the three-year term and to Morin’s 2023 demand for payment of the “last year” of his contract but did not squarely address whether the contract was of fixed or indefinite duration, nor reconcile its conclusions with that earlier position. This omission was sufficient to establish a modest appearance of right. However, the court found that the other grounds advanced by the employer did not reveal any significant apparent weakness in the TAT’s decision. Those other arguments largely challenged the TAT’s assessment of the evidence—such as the weight given to Morin’s deletion of his phone data, the significance attributed to the employer’s subsequent conduct, and the alleged failure to discuss every factual point the employer considered important. In light of Vavilov, the Superior Court emphasized that reviewing courts must be extremely reluctant to interfere with administrative findings of fact and must not re-weigh the evidence. The employer’s challenge to the TAT’s conclusion that Morin did not truly intend to resign thus had, at best, a weak appearance of right.

Serious or irreparable prejudice and workplace climate

On the second criterion, the employer conceded that no irreparable prejudice would arise from Morin’s reinstatement pending the outcome of the judicial review. It instead argued that it would suffer serious prejudice, principally in the form of harm to the workplace climate, invoking earlier case law where courts had favored a temporary “truce” between parties in a fraught employment relationship. Originally, the employer had also relied on an internal investigative report alleging psychological harassment by Morin towards two colleagues, but it withdrew that piece from the court record after noting that the TAT had refused to admit it into evidence. Without that report, the employer was left with general assertions that Morin’s presence would threaten the work atmosphere. The Superior Court found these allegations to be vague, hypothetical and speculative. By contrast, the TAT had already carefully considered the evidence about workplace tensions, including claims that Morin had been repeatedly uncivil and disparaging, and concluded that while the atmosphere was tense, this was due not only to Morin but also to broader dysfunction within the employer’s operations. The TAT determined that the situation was not so acrimonious as to preclude reinstatement, and that conclusion had not been meaningfully undermined in the stay record. The employer also argued that circumstances had changed because Dessureault, the supervisor involved in the 1 March 2023 events, had returned to his job after previously leaving. The court held that this change, taken alone, did not amount to serious prejudice, especially since the employer had provided almost no evidence of likely future conflict or of any impossibility of managing the relationship through reasonable measures.

Balance of convenience and the employee’s need for income

The third criterion required the court to weigh the inconvenience to each party of granting or refusing the stay. Given the speculative nature of the employer’s alleged harms, the balance of convenience did not favor suspending the TAT’s order. On the other side of the scale, Morin faced tangible and immediate prejudice if reinstatement were delayed: he would lose the employment income and social benefits associated with his job at a time when, according to his sworn declaration, he could not secure similar work in his field, partly because the sector was slow in winter and because his former customers had remained with the employer. Although he had occasionally found work in other fields in recent years, that was insufficient to negate his current need for the income and benefits attached to his former position. The court therefore considered that the concrete hardship to Morin outweighed the employer’s largely hypothetical concerns about workplace climate.

Outcome and financial implications

The Superior Court concluded that the case did not present the kind of exceptional circumstances that would justify staying the execution of an administrative labour decision. While one of the employer’s grounds of review showed some arguable weakness relating to the treatment of the contract term, this was not enough to overcome the absence of serious prejudice and the balance of convenience, which clearly favored letting the TAT’s order take effect. The court therefore dismissed Location Multi-Équipements inc.’s application to stay the TAT decision and ordered the employer to pay costs of justice. As a result, Morin remains entitled to reinstatement and to the indemnity for lost salary and benefits previously ordered by the TAT, subject to the outcome of the pending judicial review. However, the precise total monetary amount awarded—both the indemnity ordered by the TAT and the court costs—is not specified in the judgment and cannot be determined from this decision alone; what can be said is that the successful party on the stay application is Denis Morin, in whose favor reinstatement, ongoing compensation as ordered by the TAT, and costs of the stay proceedings have been maintained, with the exact figures left unspecified.