Academic: Journal Article

The article gives a significant review of the OHRT adjudication of requests for anonymity in disability cases and discussed the risk of disclosure. It further discusses the balancing of the open courts principle vrs. the right to privacy; the right to privacy vrs. freedom of the press. 

Discusses leading principals of accommodation law. A review of the legal standard of accommodation and undue hardship. Reviews unions duties in the accommodation process and their potential liabilities. reviews Reviews case law on employees’ duty to participate in the accommodation process and under what grounds the employee can refuse the employer offered accommodation. reviews the duty to accommodate mental health and addiction disabilties and culpable vrs. non-culpable behavior. Brief discussion of perceived disability and drug testing. Reviews case law on employees privacy rights vs.

General overview of main human rights values in employment; disability law; leading principles of accommodation, undue hardship , legitimate operational requirements of a workplace, responsibilities of unions in employment disputes; employees responsibilities. 

Discrimination has, in Ontario cases, been prohibited in cases where the individual's obesity has been perceived to be a disability, but the author believes that 'obesity' should be labeled as a distinct prohibited category of discrimination under law.

The article discusses the conceptual challange that addiction and mental health pose in being not immutable, pose for establishing prima facia discrimination and how courts/adjudicators have dealt with it. The article addresses the test to determine indirect discrimination and the need to include indirect discrimination to achieve substantive equality. 

Examines the extent that Charter of Rights concepts for determining prima facia discrimination such as stereotyping, prejudice, arbitrariness apply to finding discrimination under statutory human rights codes. 

Uses an analysis of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and the main principles of accessibility and the means of reasonable accommodation - the extent to which they are used to protect the human rights of disabled persons in the workplace depends on whether, and to what degree, the state and its workforce embraces the CRPD's values. However, civil society does not have this same obligation, but have a right to participate in the process of designing an inclusive work environment. 

The article discusses how the Canadian Armed Forces are exempt by the Canadian Human Rights Code, based on the principle of universality of service, from having to accommodate disabled members, there for being able to terminate them based on medical reasons. This means the Forces are allowed to engage in prima facia discrimination. The universality of service principal is a bona fide occupational requirement. The article argues that the universality principle is not reasonably necessary. 

Explores the social construction of heavy weight as a disability, with considerations of illness, aesthetic, and blame; reviews Canadian human rights cases in which obesity has been considered as a disability; discusses mythopoeia and its affect on the social construction models. 

The author reviews the inconsistent interpretation between jurisdictions of the procedural duty to accommodate and argues that the application in Ontario is a miss-interpretation of the law and leads to distorted results.