Do you have pay stubs, a contract, invoice, tax paperwork, or anything else?

Do you know where the company's headquarters are, even if they aren't in your province? Do you know who your manager's manager is and how to reach them? Do you know how to reach the HR department, or what passes for it? The accounting department, in case there's a payment error?

@keshlam "Do you know where the company's headquarters are, even if they aren't in your province?" yes because they show up on Google. " Do you know who your manager's manager is and how to reach them? Do you know how to reach the HR department, or what passes for it? The accounting department, in case there's a payment error?" no - how should I ask for it without making it sound like there is a problem?

"Hey, I should know these in case an issue ever arises and I can't reach you..." Or ask if there's a company index/orgchart/phonebook on an internal website somewhere. Or both. This really isn't an unreasonable ask.

Asking without judgement: are you actually legally employed by this company or is this an "under the counter" arrangement?

You should be able to find out lots of things by the company name alone. In the UK for example, you visit companieshouse.gov.uk, first entry on their website is "Find company information", you type in the first word of my company name, and you find my company including address and my name, when it was founded, etc. In the UK, any letter sent to the address found at companies house.gov.uk counts as legally delivered (if the company moves and doesn't update this address).

To further @gnasher729 answer, you can look in the CBR (All provinces aren't covered by the registry yet0

I think you are asking the wrong question. Address and details are nice, but isn't your question really in line of "how to ensure that I will actually continue to be employed at X"? And with no paperwork, no paystubs, no invoices, this whole thing feels extremely shady. What is the nature of the work you are doing? Like, even though someone says they are from company XYZ, doesn't mean they actually are.

@PhilipKendall I'm not sure, that's sort of what I'd like to figure out if this is somehow an "under the counter arrangement"? To be clear I've never had any issues with the employer or getting paid (and to my knowledge nothing is illegal about the setup).

@TymoteuszPaul I agree with what you're saying. Though I've never had any issues getting paid and so far things have worked out well. The only evidence I have that they work for the company they claim they do is the email domain in their email address.

I mean, there's a website I login to that has a record of all my completed shifts. So there is that for a paper trail.

I have an old yahoo.com email address but that doesn't mean that I work for Yahoo!.

@TymoteuszPaul sorry that you feel attacked and find me evasive. It's sales and marketing and I go to different retail locations. Email is some proof, though that is my question what else I should have considering there is no physical location in my province.

@stipulateplonk Email is no proof that you have ever been actually employed by the company. It is some proof that your "manager" is employed there, but they might well have just manually made an account for you in their roster website without ever telling the rest of the company (HR etc.). Do you have a work e-mail address at the company? Are you included in the usual company-wide e-mails (the CEO sharing their excitement over the yearly sales figures, HR sending updates to internal policies, etc.), or does your "manager" conveniently forward those to you?

@TooTea no I don't have any of that stuff. I agree it's shaddy though technically not illegal. My question is what should I do at this point? How should I inquire about this?

@TooTea "Email is no proof that you have ever been actually employed by the company" what do you mean by this, that it is unclear if I'm an employee or contractor? If I have emails where they tell me to do work and I reply with them with the completed work, that is proof that I have worked for them. Are you saying the person who is paying me may not have the authority to do so?

@stipulateplonk Yes, perhaps. I'm not familiar with the law in Canada (having only ever worked in the EU), but it could be that your manager just "hired" you under the table, possibly without involving the rest of the company at all (perhaps because they actually don't have the authority, perhaps because the rest of the company doesn't want to be formally involved in illegal labour). Of course these are just my wild guesses.

It sounds very much like your manager is subcontracting you to do his or her work. You're basically a supplier and they're probably pretending to be doing the work of two people, when instead they're playing it smart and just letting you do their day job

If you're a canadian citizen (even more if you are a foreigner living there on a visa), you are expected to pay taxes on your income. Playing dumb won't help when the authorities, almost inevitably, catch up with your "employer" one day. It's not like you were coerced into that job ...

@stipulateplonk: "I'm not sure, that's sort of what I'd like to figure out if this is somehow an "under the counter arrangement"?" Do you not file taxes? Because your tax sheet will very clearly list this as income or not. Given that this has been going on for a number of yours, I'm hard-pressed to think that there has not been a tax season in this period.