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My first experience with a workplace investigation was vicariously first-hand, when a close friend of mine was named as a respondent and I became their de facto support person. The investigation was ongoing for three months. During that time, my friend ate, slept, and breathed that investigation.
It has become somewhat of a Rubin Thomlinson tradition to host a webinar at the beginning of each year outlining our top 10 workplace investigation cases from the previous year. On January 14, 2021, we hosted our most well-attended webinar yet: The top 10 cases of 2020. Here are the discussed themes and a very brief summary of the presentation.
It seems like every time I see the news or read the paper, there are stories of trauma everywhere. This is partially because, sometimes, these are the stories the media features for “clicks.” But I think, more importantly, this is because trauma is just incredibly prevalent in the human experience.
Attitudes towards equality have evolved rapidly over the past few years, as have the standards by which we measure discrimination. As a result of these shifts, a question has emerged regarding whether the concept of “reverse discrimination” exists – that is, can individuals who have not been historically disadvantaged experience discrimination? This in turn begs the broader question – does discrimination occur anytime there is any difference in treatment?
Depuis la mi-mars 2020, la majorité de nos enquêtes en milieu de travail et au sein des institutions postsecondaires se font de façon virtuelle. Donnant suite aux consignes de la santé publique concernant la distanciation sociale, nous rencontrons rarement les parties et témoins d’une enquête en personne, plutôt nous les rencontrons par vidéoconférence. Cette méthode de communication a certaines retombées du point de vue de la langue. Notamment, toute difficulté de compréhension est accrue par voie virtuelle. Il y a toutefois moyen d’atténuer ces difficultés. De plus, les contraintes géographiques disparaissent avec les enquêtes virtuelles.
As a reviewer of workplace investigation reports, I try to encourage the use of plain language. By this, I mean that I try to make sure that a report can be easily understood by the people who read it. I admit that this is not always easy. I am a lawyer, after all, which means that I was trained to make everything sound more complicated than it really is.
On January 1, 2021, new regulations will come into force that will amend the Canada Labour Code (Code) and change how harassment and violence investigations are to be conducted in federally-regulated workplaces. Among the changes are the provisions surrounding the selection of a workplace investigator. Under the new regulations, an employer can appoint an investigator from a list of investigators that the employer has jointly developed with its health and safety representative, workplace committee, or policy committee.
In our workplace investigation training sessions, we often talk about the four pillars of the investigation process: fairness, thoroughness, timeliness, and confidentiality. The recent decision of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (the “Tribunal”), Young v. O-I Canada Corp., is an example of an investigation under scrutiny due to its lack of thoroughness.
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