Guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

This guaranteed doesn't apply if you are expressing yourself using a company's infra-structure and/or doing it on company time. It is unclear if this was the case in this situation.

Workers fired over Internet postings
Contributed by: jensonj
January 17, 2007

By LAURA CZEKAJ, OTTAWA SUN

Several Farm Boy employees in Ottawa have been fired over the past week after the company learned of their postings on a popular Internet networking website.

The employees were dismissed from Farm Boy locations across the city after posting comments in the "I Got Farm Boy'd" group on the Facebook website.

The group has 186 members and is described as "for current and past employees of Farmboy Inc. to share experiences, discuss topics and even have a place to express their opinion as guaranteed under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms."

Facebook is also home to groups called "Farm Boy's Farm Hands" and "I Have Been Terminated From Farm Boy." Both these groups feature the corporate logo. Members of all the groups frequently use their full names.

On Friday, Devon Bourgeois was called into his store manger's office at the Kanata Farm Boy and shown copies of posts he had written Nov. 13.

"I particularly was confronted for, and terminated for, admission of theft, which, based on the posts I had written, was under a hypothetical topic known as 'Only at Farm Boy' had these situations occurred," he said.

NOT A 'CONFESSION'

"My post was taken to be literal and as a confession, which it never was."

During more than two years with the company, Bourgeois was promoted to supervisor and given three raises.

"I was not a bad employee, I did not break rules," he said. "That's why I didn't understand why I was terminated so quickly."

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2007/01/17/pf-3394584.html