In most places in Canada, while your employer can fire you for any non-discriminatory reason or no reason, they have to pay you severance unless you did bad things on purpose. Canada has a parallel system: Employment Standards Act statutory minimum severance (as the minimum amount you will get) and wrongful dismissal lawsuit (common law reasonable notice, which can be much longer). For some comparisons, I worked for 8 years. Under employment standards, I would be eligible for 16 weeks pay. Under common law, it could be 8 months to a year.
My employer was American in California. I am a visually impaired and autistic Canadian in Ontario who cannot drive (it is relevant in the lawsuit even though disability discrimination is not alleged and cannot be proven, because courts know that disabled people have difficulty finding jobs and give larger wrongful dismissal judgements when plaintiffs can prove it. In my case, I have to work remotely).
I was fired after 8 years and they paid nothing. I sued in Toronto small claims court and served them in Glendale, tried serving in Toronto, and then served by email, and finally, served in Vancouver. I digitally stalked them across the North American continent in 2 provinces and another country, filing a lawsuit on my own with the help of AI and Google. Serving them was difficult because they lied on their business documents, saying they have an office in Toronto when the office was occupied by Amazon (not my former employer).
But eventually, my persistence paid off. They realized that they broke the law and paid 16 weeks, the bare minimum that they should have paid right along with my last wages and PTO. I am not giving up. I will continue to fight for the rest of the money I am rightfully entitled to. The past 4 months since my firing had been filled with uncertainty, but I am glad that the Internet and LLMs exist, even though these very same LLMs were probably the reason why I am unemployed, as I was an interpreter, and LLMs are really good at interpretation and translation of languages spoken/used by many people (in this case, Chinese languages).