Employment & Human Rights Law In Canada : Canada Employment Human Rights Lawyer : Lisa Stam, Law Firm : Labour Law in Toronto, Ontario

Here are my last minute Clawbie nominations.  This year, there are way too many excellent Canadian legal blogs to choose from, so here is my unscientific and utterly biased criteria:

1. Must focus on employment and labour law (because frankly, I rarely have time to read other blogs and wouldn’t have a clue anyways).
2. Must be an individual’s blog, rather than a firm blog.  I prefer to get to know the voice, personality and perspective of the individual writing.  I also want to applaud the extra effort it takes for an individual to keep up the hard work without having the resources of ghost writers or a marketing department.
3. I like frequent postings. This is my most hypercritical criteria, since I never blog as much as I’d like to.

My Top 3:

Doorey’s Workplace Law Blog - Lots of opinions, lots of passion and frequent, interesting updates on Canadian employment and labour law.

Quebec Labour Law -Gabriel Granatstein does a great job of regularly posting relevant, accessible and interesting blogs on Quebec employment and labour law. It’s a unique and valuable resource.

Canadian HR Law

Stewart Rudner’s blog posts in the HR Reporter website are a great source of employment law concepts and practice points.  As the king of legal social media in the employment realm in Toronto, Stewart is a great example of how to communicate, interact and relate to his audience.  

Runner’s Up:

Human Rights in the Workplace

Donna Seale consistently writes interesting, compassionate, topical pieces.  She has told me that business was unusually busy for her this fall, so her posts are not very frequent, but are still great when she manages to fit it all in. I would have put her in the top 3 if she wasn’t such a successful, busy lawyer.

Watershed LLP

Michael Fitzgibbon has been a long-time blogger that provides brief yet dense posts that highlight new developments in employment law in an interesting, accessible manner.  His business model and approach to client fees makes him both a business and thought leader in our field.

Canadian Workplace Law

Greg Gowe’s blog has been around since 1997, long before most of us had heard of the word “blog”.  Based in BC, he provides diverse, frequent and current employment and labour law updates.

First Reference Talks

Yosie Saint-Cyr and her team of bloggers have become my go-to starting point on many issues.  In depth, timely and well written articles. Yes, I know this one doesn’t meet my second criteria, but it’s such a good blog and has a small team, and the posts still read with lots of individual personality.

Happy holidays everyone!

DECEMBER 31, 2011 UPDATE: 

I am pleased to note that my blog has been selected for a 2011 Clawbies Award for one of the 3 best private practice legal blogs in Canada.  Thank you to everyone who nominated me, to those on the panel who made the decision, and to the readers who keep me on my toes!

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This is Part 3 of my three part series on the Accessibility for Ontarians with a Disability Act, 2005.  In the first post, I discussed the Customer Service Standard and in the second post, I outlined the Integrated Accessibility Standards.  Both standards are regulations under AODA and set out further detail on the requirements of businesses and workplaces to become accessible for individuals with a disability.

AODA Penalties for Non-Compliance

What are the penalties for failing to comply with AODA?  While AODA lays out the basic framework for how the compliance mechanism will be set up, the details are in the Integrated Accessibility Standard.  The compliance provisions expressly apply to both the Customer Service Standard and the Integrated Accessibility Standard.

In short, organizations can face fines of a daily penalty up to a maximum of $100,000 against the corporation and $50,000 against an individual, in addition to other non-monetary remedial penalties permitted by AODA.

Under AODA, inspectors have the authority to carry out an inspection by entering a business without a warrant, and may require production of documents or data, and/or interview any person present in the business on matters relevant to the inspection.

Where's the Teeth?

AODA’s objective is to encourage corporate compliance. There is no individual compliant mechanism set out in AODA, and the Ministry will not be pursuing individual complaints about an AODA violation.  The Ministry may, however, look into patterns of complaints about certain organizations, but again, with a view to the organization complying, rather than a focus on prosecution. 

Where we will see all the action for individual complaints - and for the respondent employers - is at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.  For anyone with an individual complaint about his or her ability to access a particular goods or service in Ontario, he or she can file a discrimination claim at the Tribunal. 

AODA specifically provides that any law (e.g. the Human Rights Code) that imposes a higher level of accessibility shall prevail, and the Human Rights Tribunal continues to issue awards upholding the paramountcy of the Human Rights Code.

Because the AODA standards came into effect for the public sector in 2010, we are already seeing cases come out of the Tribunal that cite AODA and its regulations as the minimum accessibility standards that organizations should meet.   

Human Rights Tribunal Case Law

For example, in Palangio v Cochrane (Town), the employer was ordered to pay $10,000 to a town counselor because of the manner in which the council addressed (or initially, failed to address) his requests to record the council meetings due to his low hearing.  In that case, the fellow council members suspected he was leaking details to the media and refused his request.  Among other things, the Tribunal held that the town of Cochrane failed to train its employees on how to deal with AODA complaints.

Take-Away for Employers 

While the AODA feel-good compliance framework may not sound very threatening, employers must be aware of the likely increase of discrimination claims at the Human Rights Tribunal.  It may prove to be a better use of resources to comply up-front, rather than waiting for an individual to complain about their inability access your goods or services, or for an employee to file a claim for discrimination in the workplace.  

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I jumped into blogging in 2009 and have been grateful for the opportunity to participate in the online conversation about the workplace, employment law, and social media in general. 

We continue to be in a technological revolution that has forever changed how we communicate to each other - or at the least, for you cynics and/or technophobes out there, has added an additional layer of opportunity that lets us each reach out to people we would never have met a decade ago.

Lexblog, the back-end publisher of my blog, recently wrote an article that touches on why I blog.  My thanks to Nick Shekeryk, who took the time to pick up the old-fashion phone and call me.  For anyone out there considering whether it's worth the effort, I can tell you that I've met a lot of generous, helpful and smart people through blogging.  Yes, it's led to clients, but of more value to me is the connection to people all around the continent and beyond as a result of our borderless online world. 

For any newbies looking for employment law blogs, the Justica.com blawg search is a great starting point.

And for readers interested in Canadian law blogs, it's Clawbies time again!  The nomination process for the Canadian Law Blog Awards is not only collegial and fun, but a great way to find out what blogs are out there.  I encourage everyone to keep an eye on the Clawbie website, and if you're on Twitter, follow the discussion with #clawbies2011.

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