This month is Mental Health Awareness Month!
Mental Health Awareness Month takes place across Canada in May every year. During this month, Canadians can learn about mental illnesses and how they affect people’s lives in different ways. In addition, the public can learn more about how to reduce the stigma around mental illnesses.
Mental illnesses are medical conditions that can affect many different aspects of a person, such as:
In our last article, we discussed how employers, landlords, and service providers must ensure that people receive accommodations to perform essential duties or requirements. Accommodating essential requirements means distinguishing the most vital parts of a job, a service, or being a tenant. In this article, we will explore how employers, landlords, and service providers can distinguish essential requirements of a job or service from non-essential requirements, through procedural accommodation.
Under the Ontario Human Rights Code (the Code), employers, landlords, and service providers must accommodate people with disabilities. In other words, organizations have a duty to make changes in order to meet the needs of workers, tenants, customers, or clients with disabilities. The right to accommodation ensures that people can work productively, live independently, and access services open to non-disabled people. Employers, landlords, and other service providers must implement accommodations for essential duties and requirements. Accommodating essential requirements means distinguishing the most vital parts of a job, a service, or being a tenant. Then, employers, landlords, or service providers must ensure that people receive accommodations to perform those essential duties or requirements.
Under the Ontario Human Rights Code (the Code), employers, landlords, and service providers must accommodate people with disabilities. In other words, organizations have a duty to make changes in order to meet the needs of workers, tenants, customers, or clients with disabilities. The right to accommodation ensures that people can work productively, live independently, and access services open to non-disabled people. This right has two elements, procedural and substantive accommodation. Under the Code, organizations must accommodate people in both ways.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) writes policies to help people understand what types of discrimination are. In addition, these policies outline how to prevent and respond to different forms of discrimination. According to the OHRC’s Policy on Ableism and Discrimination based on disability, people can protest when they experience discrimination. For instance, people can protest directly to a discriminating organization, or to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO). When people protest, organizations sometimes threaten reprisals against them. In other words, the organization will threaten to take more actions to harm them if they protest against the discrimination they are already experiencing. However, the Ontario Human Rights Code (the Code) forbids organizations from making reprisals. Instead, people have the right to object to discrimination and to seek remedies from organizations that discriminate against them.
