Serious insight for serious situations.

Serious insight for serious situations.

Insights

Reflections and news direct from Rubin Thomlinson.
Subscribe to receive updates of interest to you.

SUBSCRIBE

Filtered By:

Does “reverse discrimination” exist? According to these cases, probably not.

February 9, 2021

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?

Read More

Question de langue dans les enquêtes virtuelles | Language issues in virtual investigations

February 2, 2021

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.

Read More

Workplace investigation reports: Why plain language is best

January 26, 2021 | By Liliane Gingras

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.

Read More

Improving the workplace in 2021—Be proactive, not reactive

January 19, 2021 | By Dana J. Campbell-Stevens

We can all agree that 2020 was a year for the history books. So much happened that, at the beginning of the year, no one could have predicted or imagined. In fact, had someone made a movie about the events of 2020 before they happened, it might have been raved as a critically acclaimed fictional horror and the author praised for their “other worldly” imagination. That might be a bit of an overstatement, but I think it captures the general feeling.

Read More

Making a list and checking it twice? Selecting an investigator in federally-regulated workplaces

January 4, 2021

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.

Read More

Coping with triggers as a workplace investigator

January 12, 2021

I can remember this event like it was yesterday. It was at the beginning of my career as a workplace investigator, and I was assigned to conduct an investigation of discrimination on the grounds of race. On this particular day, I recall sitting there, listening to the Respondent tell their side of the story. Suddenly, a familiar but deeply uncomfortable feeling crept up. It was at that moment I knew that I was “triggered.” Unbeknownst to me on that day, that “familiar” feeling was me reliving a past trauma I have experienced.

Read More

The importance of being thorough in workplace investigations: A reminder

December 15, 2020

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.

Read More

“Friends with benefits” is NOT “relatively benign” evidence

December 7, 2020 | By Chantel Levy

In a recent blog, my colleague Sharon Naipaul reviewed the trilogy of 2019 Supreme Court of Canada sexual assault cases and considered how they inform our work as workplace investigators. Although it was in the early 1990s that new procedure under the Criminal Code limited the admissibility of past sexual history evidence at trial, these cases demonstrate that there is still tension with how to use less overt evidence of prior sexual history. This area is problematic as it continues to be plagued by what have been dubbed as the “twin myths.”

Read More