Non competes in Canada are also enforced very selectively. The standard legal advice is to structure the agreement such as it still stands (severability) even if specific parts of it are struck down because of how likely that is.<p>For non compete to work, the affected person has to have specific knowledge to protect (usually client accounts) and the restriction needs to be narrow to specific industry (&quot;software&quot; is not good enough, &quot;Point of Sales software for Bars and Restaurants&quot; probably is), duration needs to be only as short as it needs to be and geographically bounded.<p>The only time broad non-compete really hold up is for things like sales of a business where the founders are barred from immediately competing with the company they just sold.