Legalities of hire a part time assistance during wedding

[camaradas]

Hi, I just move to canada I will start shooting some wedding. in my country I normally use an assistance carrying an Elinchrom Ranger with a Softbox. I wondered what are the Legalities of hire a part-time assistance (3-4 hours every other saturday) here in canada? can I just pay let say $100 per wedding and that it? or there are other factors that I need to be aware? thanks.

[camaradas]

Ok folks, over 80 views but not a single response yet.

[Iguanasan]

Hey, camaradas. First off, welcome to the forum. Sorry you got missed but please don't take it personally. Many of those views were likely search engine indexing.

I think you are asking a question that maybe not everyone can answer as well. I'll give you my take on it, is that you have to ensure you meet an legal obligations for employing someone and since I've never had to do that I'm not sure what those might be. I would check with the Department of Labour or something in whichever province you are in to ensure you don't break any laws.

That being said, I believe that you can hire people on contract for whatever they are willing to accept so, yes, $100 for the day might be fine for an assistant who is hired as an individual on a contract basis. If you hire them on a more permanent basis then you have to get into CPP and EI and a whole bunch of other things like that as you then become an employer. A personal contract should make life a lot easier.

[Marko]

Sorry camaradas, been having computer issues lately...which made me miss this thread.

I shot weddings for years and i know a bunch of wedding photogs from High end to low end.
The VAST majority pay their assistants in cash.... no contract - no nothing.

Iggy has it totally right - If I would hire a regular assistant and wanted to make it legit, I would do it on a contract basis only. Meaning they would be a contract worker and NOT an official employee. This means that you just negotiate a rate and that's it.
If they were a regular employee, you would have LOADS of regular paperwork to fill out and many additional obligations.
Hope that helps.

[MartinW]

...I would check with the Department of Labour or something in whichever province you are in to ensure you don't break any laws...

Good advise from Iggy, it's best to get the info right from the horse's mouth. Revenue Canada would be another source for information, of course.
I have gone that route of having "employees" invoice me as independent contractors, although in a business unrelated to yours. Here's the catch... for a person to be defined as a contractor they must show income from multiple streams. I found this out when an acquaintance, who was in a similar business to mine, had one of his workers "play the fool" and try to collect EI. This employer was contacted and told that what he had was an 'employee" and not a "contractor". He was also told that the the onus had been on him, as the employer, to have deducted/submitted the necessary EI payments... in other words, the employee was entitled to collect EI and the employer was told that he would be made financially responsible for the employee's EI payments.
Is this likely to happen to you at this small scale? Probably not, but it doesn't hurt to know what to look out for.

[camaradas]

Thanks you guys really appreciate your help, I didn't meant to be rude, I was a bit desperate to find any info about it and all you input was really helpful

[Iguanasan]

Thanks you guys really appreciate your help, I didn't meant to be rude, I was a bit desperate to find any info about it and all you input was really helpful

No worries, it didn't come across as rude at all. I think we all felt bad for missing the thread. Cheers and I hope you'll come back and post some images!