Thanks to Human Rights in the Workplace Blog for providing this very useful summary of an employer’s obligations to accommodate worker disabilities under Canadian law. The leading Supreme Court of Canada case is Meiorin. Michael Lynk from Western’s Law School has written some excellent pieces describing the development of accommodation law. One of those articles is available for free download here. In Ontario, the Commission has produced a guideline that describes the extent of accommodation required before “undue hardship” is reached. In terms of cost, the guidelines provides that the cost of accommodation must be, “so high that it affects the survival of the organization or business, or changes its essential nature”. This is why employers will not often be successful in arguing that they cannot “afford” to accommodate an employee’s disability. What do you think of the approach in Canadian law to accommodating disabilities?
David Doorey
Professor Doorey is an Associate Professor of Work Law and Industrial Relations at York University. He is the Director of the School of HRM at York and Director of Osgoode Hall Law School’s executive LLM Program in Labour and Employment Law and on the Advisory Board of the Osgoode Certificate program in Labour Law. He is a Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program and a member of the International Advisory Committee on Harvard University’s Clean Slate Project, which is re-imaging labor law for the 21st century
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