When I first started practising employment law many years ago, there was a phenomenon known as “building a case for cause”. When you represented an employee, as I often did at the time, you could always tell when an employer was trying to do this. After a lengthy and often unblemished tenure of employment, your
Section 45.1 of the Ontario Human Rights Code (the “Code”) permits the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (“HRTO”) to dismiss all or part of an application where “another proceeding has appropriately dealt with the substance of the application.” In Ontario (Community Safety and Correctional Services) v De Lottinville, 2015 ONSC 3085, the Ontario Divisional Court considered the
J’ai grandi en parlant en français. Quand j’étais petite et que je jouais avec mes amis dans le quartier, on parlait en français ou en anglais selon les mots qui nous venaient à l’esprit. On vivait dans une communauté composée de familles anglophones, de familles francophones ou de familles bilingues, alors la langue n’était jamais
A decision from the Ontario Superior Court of Justice last week contains some of the most disturbing termination facts I have seen in some time. Quite simply, it is a case study on how not to treat an employee with a disability – or any employee for that matter – and how not to terminate
I grew up speaking French. From the time that I was little and playing with my friends in the neighbourhood, we spoke French or English depending upon what words came to mind. We lived in a community with English families, French families or bilingual families so language was never a dividing line – we were
The Little Buddies Preschool Centre recently learned some valuable lessons about how human rights laws work in Ontario. Amber Lougheed had worked for Little Buddies as an Early Childhood Educator for just over a year when she learned that she was pregnant with her second child. Ms. Lougheed was a single mother and so had
In preparing for an upcoming course on bias, I have been thinking about the potential impacts that various biases might have on the respondent interview in a workplace investigation. While investigators often turn their minds to issues such as racial or cultural bias, as well as biases that might flow from a personal relationship, another
I did this search this morning as an experiment. While not all the cases reported on CanLII[1] dealt with sexual harassment of an employee working a restaurant, many did. By way of a simplistic comparison, the search term “Sexual Harassment and Dentists” yielded 166 results. A quick review of the restaurant cases revealed a number
In his Report on the Ontario Human Rights Review 2012, Andrew Pinto commented on the general damages awards being awarded by the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (“HRTO”). Noting that general damages awards of $5,000, $10,000 and $15,000 seemed to correspond to low, medium and high damage awards, he commented that “there appears to be
We’re now several days into the Mike Duffy trial and the stage is set for a public examination of the expenses that Mr. Duffy claimed while he was a member of the Senate. Ultimately, it will be up to Justice Vaillancourt to decide if Mr. Duffy is guilty of a criminal offence, but this case
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