It’s my understanding that non-competes have no teeth in Canada — in the software industry at least. Is there some except for comp/electrical/mechanical engineers as may be employed at this company?

Correct. "These are generally only upheld in exceptional cases." ===https://www.canadaemploymenthumanrightslaw.com/2018/02/emplo...

Does not stop employers from trying...and most employees do not challenge it.

Worth noting that employers can still try to enforce it via sending nasty-grams to your new employer, which can definitely cause you significant issues if your new employer isn't willing to take on the risk of being involved in a non-compete lawsuit on your behalf.

how would they get involved?

if the non-compete is invalid, and the new emoloyer gives me trouble because of it, can't i also go after the new employer for that?

i mean, making non-competes invalid should protect me from that, otherwise it would still reduce my chances to get a job

The key thing is that if your old employer is sending out demand letters, you have to go through expensive legal proceedings to clear the encumbrance on employing you. Your new employer has a letter stating that they have to either immediately terminate your employment or get sued - even if they will win in the eventually legal proceedings, lots of places are not willing to get sued over it. Some won't even be willing to pay a lawyer to figure out whether or not the suit has merit.

Still requires you to take an active role in defending yourself,and some employers may not want the hassle.

they can't avoid the hassle. if they terminate me they'll face a wrong termination lawsuit.

A layoff isn’t about you! The company said they don’t want anyone working in that position anymore, not just you. It doesn’t reflect on you at all! :)

Not true when the company that laid you off constantly posts job openings with your exact job description. You're forgetting about things like age discrimination, too. For example, I'm in my 50s and had a long history with my previous employer. Promotions, bonuses, etc. However, big companies in the US do layoffs to get rid of pension liabilities. I had no pension at this company, but because of my age I was tagged. Why? Age demographics...including those without pensions in the layoff rounds let the company show they were not violating the WARN Act and others (in the US) by singling out only pension holders.

Laid off from my first full-time job! Started at RIM/Blackberry in Jan 2012 in the BB OS group working on BB10. Was laid off in March 2013.

Got 10 weeks of severance so I was funemployed for most of the rest of that year.

Did some freelancing, projects, and went on a month-long backpacking trip.

Full disclosure: was making CAD 70k/year at RIM and my next full time job started around Nov 2013 for GBP 41k/year (and by March 2014 visa stuff was settled and I’d moved to London).

I also moved from Ontario to London in the same year. What was the job you went into?

Specialized travel agency called Your Golf Travel.

But you had to have saved up money in the first place in order to make a downpayment on the mortgage. If your rent is so expensive that you can’t save any money then you aren’t going to be able to get a mortgage anyway. And if you can save money for a downpayment then you have to compare the opportunity cost of investing those savings versus using them to buy a house.

> But you had to have saved up money in the first place in order to make a downpayment on the mortgage

Now you understand why my generation is so truly fucked.

>And if you can save money for a downpayment then you have to compare the opportunity cost of investing those savings versus using them to buy a house.

The house will always win if you are in any metropolitan area. In 20 years property prices in Munich, for example, have tripled or quadrupled, if not more. If you're not in a metro area you don't have the rent problem anyway.

> Now you understand why my generation is so truly fucked.

No. I find it incredibly difficult to understand why my generation seems to be so truly 'fucked'. Especially, the type of people who are on HN should be able to save money and make a down payment.

you are exactly right, but when people have bad ideas lodged in their heads, it's difficult to dislodge them.

Canada has free “Interac E-transfers” that you can send to an email address or mobile phone number.

Historically most banks have charged $1-$2 for an e-transfer (often with a limited number of free transfers per month, or a different type of chequing account one can sign up for to get free transfers), though it seems prices have been dropping in the past few years. Apparently the Bank of Montreal removed e-transfer fees on personal accounts a year or two ago.

So there's definitely still overhead that can make small transfers infeasible, but it's getting better.

CIBC has done the same. TD charges only $0.50 on the most basic plan and it is free on other plans. Simplii (née PC Financial) has always had free Interac e-Transfers. Interac fees have vanished or are vanishing for most people. The daily and weekly maximums are still an issue though ($3k and $10k at most banks usually).

Exclusionary zoning is an even worse form of institutionalized privilege that benefits the wealthy and middle class rather than the poor and middle class.

I get that those opposed to density claim this is one of the reasons they oppose it, but is there any evidence of it?

Usually an increase in density in an area will increase land values rather then depress them.

So a landlord should be subject to the free market, but tenants shouldn’t be? Tenants should be protected from rent increases, but property owners shouldn’t be protected against cost increases? That isn’t the free market.

One way to look at this is, land owners are generally wealthier than renters. According to the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances landowners are 44 times wealthier. It makes sense that the government protects people who are less able to deal with financial instability.

It makes sense, but it is also a bad idea. If someone can't afford the cost of living, they should relocate to somewhere else where they can.

Western civilisation has had phenomenal results with the principle that when there isn't enough of something then the owner of that thing gets to decide who goes without. Housing is not so special that it deserves an exemption. Squeezing landlords is one of several ways to lock a housing shortage in for the long term. It has been established that letting people make big profits doing something is a great way to get more of the something - and that applies to renting out houses too. The only role for the government in making sure it is easy to build more houses and that everyone sticks to what they signed when it comes to contracts.

I agree, except that housing right now isn’t a free market precisely because of zoning rules that artificially limit what can be built and where. Until existing land owners lose the right to rig the market, markets should be rigged in favour of tenants who have less power.

Where it’s easy to build new housing supply I’m in favour of looser rent control or removing rent control because it’ll be redundant.

Yup it’s a combination of protecting those who are less powerful and I would argue a way to avoid perverse incentives. If a landlord can arbitrarily raise rent, they have no incentive to perform ongoing (inexpensive maintenance). They can wait until the problems become critical and much more expensive and then pass those costs onto the tenant. With rent control the landlord knows they have to control costs and has more incentive to perform the cheaper preventative maintenance.

It's a nice theory, but also a very well tested one. Just read an article on bloomberg about the policy being a wash in San Francisco, with some concerns that it may have had some other effects they weren't able to measure.

It's akin to the minimum wage; why are people so bent on capping prices? Why not work on the underlying problems instead, ie what's causing those prices?

I should be able to build whatever I want on my private property. Whether it’s a house or an apartment building.

Are you also going to build the infrastructure to support your apartment building in a neighborhood of single-family homes? Are you going widen the streets, create parking, improve sewer and water lines, add traffic lights, build larger parks, route mass transit, hire more school bus drivers, hire more police? Urban planning and zoning exist for a reason.

Yes in Toronto these are called Development Charges and are charged to the buyer/builder proportional to what they are building.

And I assume that you’d be fine with your neighbour doing the same, irrespective of the impact on the value and enjoyment of your property?

If I'm happy to have gains when I do nothing but my neighbours improve their properties, then I’m also happy to risk losses when I do nothing but my neighbours make changes.

That assumes that the market is able to bear those costs. What do landlords do in stable markets where rents are flat or track inflation? Are all rentals dilapidated in those markets?