Facts

Fish, Ham and Asparagus Ltd. ("FHASL") is a federally incorporated business that operates a restaurant in each of Ottawa, Toronto, and Kitchener, Ontario. It also sells frozen dinners to grocery chains across Canada. The frozen dinners are produced at its facility in Burlington Ontario.

The pandemic has been very difficult on the 3 restaurants in Ottawa, Toronto and Kitchener. But the frozen dinner business has picked up a lot during the pandemic.

The restaurants have lost over $ 7 million since March 2020, but the frozen dinner line has generated a profit of $2.5 million. The CEO and CFO think they can salvage the business if they close the restaurants, sell the Windsor building and focus on the frozen dinner business. The restaurants employ a total of 20 people. Management thinks 5 of those people have skills that could be transferred to the production plant in Burlington, but the rest will have to be let go. They dismiss the 15 staff without transferable skills by email and give each 2 weeks pay by e-transfer. They send the other 5 an email advising of the transfer to Burlington with an email that states, "pack your bags, you are moving to Burlington".

In addition, FHASL's CEO has just learned that a manager in its Toronto restaurant, Freddy Fowler, was asking job applicants about their religious beliefs during job interviews and refusing to hire some people based on those beliefs. He was not hiring any people of the Jewish or Muslim faiths since their religions forbid the consumption of pork products, which he thought created a conflict of interest between their religious beliefs and a major product line of the business.

Question

PART A - IDENTIFICATION

First, identify all of the legal issues in this scenario. This can be done in bullet form. Correctly identifying all of the legal issues is worth 50% of the assignment

PART B- DISCUSSION

Next, discuss each legal issue in greater depth, and consider the possible implications for FHASL as well as possible solutions.

Format - Keep your answers brief. Point form is fine but not required. There are 3 main areas of inquiry in this one.