Yes, You Can Be Fired While on Maternity Leave

iStock / Ana Luisa O.J.

This story was originally published on thewalrus.ca

By Amirah El-Safty

In the summer of 2024, a former employee of Google Canada sued the tech company for wrongful dismissal and a breach of the Ontario Human Rights Code. Sarah Lilleyman, then thirty-nine and who worked for Google Canada for around two and a half years, claimed that she had been terminated because she was pregnant; she had been fired just days after telling her bosses she was expecting.

Lilleyman was reportedly told by Google Canada that her firing was due to “restructuring” and “workforce reduction” and “changing business needs.”

In its statement of defence, as reported by the National Post, Google Canada stated that the company “denies it discriminated against Lilleyman in her employment or on termination on the basis of sex, gender, or any other protected ground under the Ontario Human Rights Code.” Furthermore, the company claimed, “Lilleyman’s allegations, even if true (which are expressly denied), do not amount to a violation of the Code . . . First, ‘pregnancy’ is not a protected ground under the Code.”

In fact, pregnancy is protected under the province’s human rights legislation: it is illegal to refuse to hire, to fire, to demote, or to lay off (even with notice) a person because they are or may become pregnant. But is Google’s claim, while untrue in a legal context, completely off the mark?

“It is a scary thing to put yourself out there to take on this gigantic company that does have so much power,” Lilleyman’s lawyer Kathryn Marshall told the National Post. “But she knows that there’s so many other women who are experiencing pregnancy discrimination at work who don’t have the ability to put themselves out there; either they don’t have the support, or they don’t have the resources. And she knows that she’s not only helping herself, but she’s helping so many other women.”

This past June, as Lilleyman’s suit moved through the courts, an organization called Moms at Work published survey data that canvassed 1,300 Canadian women working full time who had taken maternity leave from their workplace. Participants were recruited by connecting with women’s organizations and through online outreach, and data analysis was overseen by Rachel Margolis, a sociologist and demographer from Western University in London, Ontario.

The most headline-grabbing statistic? The data indicated that 15 percent of Canadian mothers