Blackmail, backfilling, and a mysterious arrest

In 2008, Canadian singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette released the album “Flavours of Entanglement” which included the song “Madness.” The song’s title was a premonition of the fallout Morissette would have with her then temporary tour manager, Keren Urinov, which has been documented in a lawsuit filed in California.

Strip away the stages, lights, and crowds and it is an ordinary employment problem; a short-term employee, an incident the employer did not fully understand at the time, a criminal history that surfaced only afterward, and demands made once the job was already over.

Morissette hired Urinov as a temporary tour manager for a 2025 European run of her tour. In July 2025, UK airport Border Force officers flagged a bag belonging to Urinov that is said to have contained cannabis and xylazine (a non-opioid animal tranquilizer, known on the streets as “tranq”). Urinov claimed ownership of the bag, produced an Israeli medical cannabis authorization, and was released. After the tour ended, Urinov’s counsel sent escalating demands to Morissette for a 15-year employment agreement with guaranteed raises and immigration assistance, and threatened to report Morissette to British authorities for drug trafficking if she refused. The lawsuit also alleges that Urinov concealed a prior drug-smuggling arrest in South America during her hiring interview. The lawsuit pleads civil extortion, fraud, and negligent misrepresentation.

The situation raises three employment law issues for Canadian employers.

The “just cause” threshold

Could an employer have dismissed this employee for cause when the bag was opened at the airport? It is impossible to tell based on the allegations alone, because courts do not ask whether the misconduct appears on a list of summary dismissal offences. Since the Supreme Court’s decision in McKinley v. BC Tel, 2001 SCC 38, the test has been contextual and proportionate; the employer must show the misconduct, assessed against the nature and circumstances of the employment, is fundamentally inconsistent with the employee’s obligations and irreparably damages the relationship. Dishonesty is not automatically sufficient for just cause. Neither is drug possession. The question is always whether this misconduct by this employee in this role destroyed the relationship.

The character of employment is also relevant in the contextual assessment. In the BC Court of Appeal decision of Van den Boogaard v. Vancouver Pile Driving, 2014 BCCA 168, a project manager in a safety-sensitive, heavily regulated industry (the employee’s job included enforcing the employer’s drug policy), used a company phone to solicit prescription drugs from a subordinate. The combination of criminality, supervisory authority, and hypocrisy about the policy he was charged with enforcing put the conduct at the root of the relationship. A tour manager sits closer to the end of the spectrum than most employers assume, given the budget authority, custody of other people’s property, and border crossings where the employer’s exposure is significant.

The hiring deceit

The concealed arrest during the hiring process – i.e., misrepresentation – can be grounds for just cause, even when the employee’s subsequent job performance has been fine. The Alberta Court of King’s Bench made the point in its 2026 decision of Tudor v. Accurate Screen, 2026 ABKB 237. A vice-president who claimed on his resume to be enrolled in an MBA program he had never applied to was dismissed for cause six months in, and the court upheld the termination. Misrepresenting qualifications goes to the heart of the employment relationship, the court wrote, and the measure is the severity of the potential harm.

Two cautions follow. First, the BC Human Rights Code, for example, protects against discrimination in employment based on a criminal or summary conviction offence that is unrelated to the employment. An employer that dismisses because it dislikes an employee’s record, without establishing a genuine connection between the conviction and the job, is exposed to a human rights complaint regardless of how the information came to light.

Second, there is a distinction between a conviction and an arrest or charge. The Code’s protection is framed around convictions, but an unproven foreign allegation is also a thin evidentiary basis for cause. An employer who dismisses on the strength of an arrest it has not verified takes a risk.

After-acquired cause

An employer that dismissed without cause and later discovers misconduct it did not know about is not necessarily stuck. An employer may rely on grounds discovered after the dismissal.

However, the employer must genuinely not have known the misconduct at the time of dismissal. Any misconduct the employer knew about and tolerated is condoned, and condoned misconduct cannot be resurrected. The employer must provide the discovered misconduct would have amounted to just cause had it been known at the time. The conduct must have occurred during, or in connection with, the formation of the employment relationship.

After-acquired cause is a real defence and employers should preserve it. However, raising it without evidence, particularly as a strategic counterattack to an employee’s own claim, can carry significant penalty from the court.

Conduct after the job ends

The blackmail allegation sits outside all of this. Cause is assessed against the employment relationship. Conduct occurring after that relationship ends generally cannot be after-acquired cause, because there is no longer a relationship for it to be inconsistent with. An employee who behaves appallingly two months after their last day has not retroactively given the employer cause.

That does not leave the employer without recourse. Post-employment conduct can breach continuing obligations of confidentiality and, for fiduciaries, loyalty. It can breach a settlement agreement or release. These can provide the basis for independent civil claims.

Here are three takeaways for employers:

• When misconduct surfaces: Investigate before you characterize. Interview the employee and record their explanation. Do not sit on misconduct: delay risks condonation. Assess the conduct against the role, not against a generic sense of seriousness.

• Preserve evidence: Company devices, accounts, and files should be secured and imaged at termination, before anyone knows whether there is anything in them.

• If something surfaces later: Take advice before pleading after-acquired cause. The consequences could be significant if a court determines it was only used as a strategic defence.

Trevor Thomas is a partner and co-founder of Ascent Employment Law in Vancouver.