Earlier this month, Vey Willetts LLP was successful at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (“HRTO”) in securing an award of almost $40,000 against a corporate respondent (and its owner) for firing a pregnant employee after 8 days of employment.

The duty to accommodate disability in the workplace has both procedural and substantive aspects. It is not enough for an employer to merely arrive at the right result; the process in getting there is equally important.

Canada will hold its election for the 44th Parliament on September 20, 2021. To ensure all eligible Canadians have the opportunity to vote, the Canada Elections Act (the “CEA”) establishes special protections for workers on polling day.

Earlier this month, Vey Willetts’ lawyer Andrew Vey presented to a the Employment Accessibility Resource Network (“EARN”). EARN is a community initiative that brings together in partnership employers, service providers and other stakeholders with the goal of increasing employment opportunities for people with disabilities.

For the past two months, the attention of the world has been fixed on Wuhan, China, as the epicentre of a new respiratory virus. The 2019 Novel Coronavirus (or 2019-nCoV) has been declared a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” by the World Health Organization and as of February 8, 2020, there have been eight (8) confirmed cases in Canada.

The Ontario Human Rights Code (the “Code”) protects employees from discrimination in the workplace based on one (or more) of its protected grounds, which include disability, age, creed, sexual orientation, and gender identity. It further places a positive obligation on Ontario employers to reasonably accommodate employees to the point of undue hardship.

In a prior blog article, we wrote about an important decision from the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (“HRTO”) concerning discriminatory hiring practices. That case was Haseeb v. Imperial Oil, and the decision involved Imperial Oil’s policy of requiring all project engineer job applicants to hold either Canadian citizenship or permanent residency in order to be eligible for employment.

Much legal ink has been spilled over the past year about the impact of cannabis legalization on the workplace (see our overview here). At the end of the day, however, the basic rules of the game have not changed. Employees still cannot expect to attend at work while intoxicated. Employers can still insist on sobriety in the workplace. And safety-concerns regarding how to structure operations remain a foremost consideration in any workplace (and in fact are mandated by operation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act).

Social media platforms moderate user-posted content to protect us from offensive, disturbing and sometimes criminal content. This process, however, is not always automatic. It often relies upon the efforts of individual workers to act as gatekeepers, keeping undesirable content at bay.

Manchester may be best known for its premiership football teams and spawning the likes of Oasis and The Smiths, however, the City was in the headlines last month for something quite different: its Student Union (“MUSU”) voted to replace clapping at all of its events with “jazz hands” (i.e. the practice of waving open hands in the air).

The pending legalization of recreational marijuana is a source of frequent debate and significant public interest. It has also raised concerns for employers as to how legalization may impact their workplaces and what steps may be taken to protect staff, ensure safety and avoid loss of productivity.

Vey Willetts lawyer Andrew Vey recently authored an article in the May 2017 edition of HR Update entitled, "Just Accommodate Me: Legal Obligations in the Accommodation Process." The article considers the roles that the employer, the employee and the union (where present) are required to play in ensuring that reasonable accommodation in the workplace is provided.

In the recent decision of Covenoho v. Pendylum Ltd., the Ontario Court of Appeal awarded a former employee of Pendylum 40 weeks' pay ($56,000.00), overturning the ruling of the Motion Judge at summary judgment. 

Q&A is a recurring series on the Vey Willetts LLP blog. The aim is to provide quick answers to questions we commonly encounter in our day-to-day practice of employment law. In this edition we focus on employee sick leave and medical information.

Last week, VW Lawyers' Andrew Vey spoke at the Ottawa Human Resources Professionals Association Conference on the process of providing reasonable accommodation to Ontario employees at work.