Law Commons^™

Wrongful Termination Claims In The Supreme Court Of Canada: Coming Up Short, Dianne Pothier

Dianne Pothier Collection

The author concludes that the Supreme Court of Canada's narrow interpretations in Wal-Mart and Honda undermine the purposes of collective bargaining and human rights legislation, respectively Wal-Mart involves an unfair labour practice complaint following the closing of a store in Jonquibre, Quebec. The author contests the analysis of the Supreme Court of Canada, as being far removed from the context of the real difficulties in dealing with determined anti-union employers, instead facilitating statutory evasion. Honda involves a claim for wrongful dismissal, where the issue at the Supreme Court of Canada level is one of remedy, premised on the dismissal amounting …

Tackling Disability Discrimination At Work: Toward A Systematic Approach, Dianne Pothier

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Approaching disability discrimination in systemic terms is the most fundamental challenge that disability human rights law currently faces. Achieving fundamental change in relation to disability at work necessitates challenging able-bodied norms. To that end, a social construction of disability entails adapting the environment to meet the needs of those with a variety of dis-abilities. Tackling disability discrimination requires contesting what is deemed “normal” be­cause it is the way most able-bodied persons function, necessitating a thorough understanding of adverse effects discrimination, which looks behind purportedly neutral practices to uncover detrimental effects on those who do not function “normally”.

The fact that …

Twenty Years Of Labour Law And The Charter, Dianne Pothier

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This article critically reviews the Charter jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada relating to labour law. The rejection of the right to strike and to bargain collectively as part of freedom of association reflect substantial judicial deference to legislative policy choices. Recently, however, a constitutional right of unfair labour protection for particularly vulnerable workers shows some judicial willingness to intervene. While freedom of expression provides significant scope to union supporters, picketing and leafleting are still subject to wide restraint, the exact parameters of which remain unclear. The Charter has had only a modest effect on labour law. Even successful …

Bcgseu: Turning A Page In Canadian Human Rights Law, Dianne Pothier

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The Supreme Court of Canada's decision in British Columbia Government and Service Employees' Union (BCGSEU) v. British Columbia (Public Service Employee Relations Commission)' starts like a classic Lord Denning judgment. Within the first few lines, without even knowing what the legal issue really is, you know who is going to win because of how that person is presented. Justice McLachlin's judgment, speaking for a unanimous nine-person Court, begins by noting that the grievor, Tawney Meiorin, "did her work well" but nonetheless "lost her job."' It was that dissonance that made the facts of the case compelling for reinstatement. But what …

Crossing The Lines In Dolphin Delivery: Some Thoughts On The Parameters Of The Charter Application - Unpublished, Dianne Potheier

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A threatened picket line which never materialized turned into the unlikely setting out of which the Supreme Court of Canada drew the demarcation lines between litigation to which the Charter does and does not apply. I use the description "unlikely setting" not because it is odd that labour picketing was the context for debating the issue of Charter application. The considerable extent to which Canadian law leaves labour picketing to the common law makes it an obvious place to assess the Charter's application to the common law. But it could not have been less planned than Retail, Wholesale and Department …

Workers Compensation: The Historical Compromise Revisited, Dianne Pothier

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This committee, after our study, declares that our present system of workers' compensation legislation is still fundamentally sound in concept.

- Report to the House of Assembly of the Select Committee on Workers' Compensation, May, 1981

In the last decade health and safety issues in the workplace have gained a special prominence. Across North America new initiatives have been taken in response to an old problem. One aspect subjected to re-evaluation in many jurisdictions is the statutory scheme of workers' compensation. In Nova Scotia a Select Committee of the Legislature was given the mandate to reassess this scheme, and its …