What counts as constructive dismissal if my employer cuts my pay or changes my role in Ontario?

A significant unilateral change to a fundamental term of your employment - a substantial pay cut, a demotion, drastically reduced responsibilities, or a major change to your reporting structure - made without your genuine agreement, can amount to constructive dismissal. Legally, this means the employer is treated as having effectively ended the employment relationship, even though no one used the words "you're fired." The core question is whether the employer breached an essential term of the employment contract, and whether that breach was serious enough that a reasonable employee would not be expected to stay under the new arrangement.

Minor adjustments to your duties, or a modest and clearly temporary change, generally will not meet this bar - the change needs to be significant and to affect something fundamental about the job you agreed to do. If a change is found to amount to constructive dismissal, you are generally entitled to the same notice, or pay in lieu of notice, as if you had been dismissed outright. How you respond to the change after it happens matters a great deal to whether a claim like this ultimately succeeds, which is addressed in related questions about condonation and resignation.