This year, a Nova Scotia Human Rights Board of Inquiry issued a highly publicized decision on racial profiling. In the case, the Board concluded that a woman had discriminated against on the basis of her race and/or colour when wrongfully accused of shoplifting at a grocery store.
A recent labour arbitration decision out of Ontario considers an employer’s obligation to protect its employees from harassment via an employer’s presence on social media.
Under the Nova Scotia Human Rights framework, a Board of Inquiry must approve any settlement reached after a complaint is referred to a hearing before the Board.
Dealing with employees who take maternity and/or paternity leave and then return to the workplace can be challenging for employers. However, the ability of parents to take maternity and/or paternity leave, and return to their employment, is a legislated right.
Family status cases continue to work through human rights tribunals across the country.
The complainant was a unionized employee and his Collective Agreement provided top-up benefits to adoptive parents, but not to biological parents. The Board of Inquiry concluded that the distinction in benefits constituted discrimination on the basis of family status.
In Flatt v Canada (Attorney General), 2015 FCA 250 (CanLII), the Federal Court of Appeal (“FCA”) visited the issue of whether the decision to breastfeed one’s child is protected by human rights legislation.
Given its rise in popularity in Canadian employment law over the past year, it is only fitting that the subject of the last Employment and Labour publication for 2015 consider a recent decision relating to this evolving area of human rights law.
Early this year, the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal chartered into new territory when it awarded an employee $150,000 in damages for injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect that were caused by the employer’s egregious violation of the employee’s human rights.
Since 2012, the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission has adopted a restorative approach as the first option in addressing human rights complaints. If a complaint is referred to a Board of Inquiry, parties have the option to either proceed to a traditional hearing, or agree to a Restorative Board of Inquiry process.