Justice for Sexually Harassed Toronto Worker: Employment Lawyer on HR Reporter

Interview Summary

A sales floor associate at a Canadian Tire franchise in Toronto has been awarded nearly $50,000 in damages after she was fired for complaining about ongoing sexual harassment from her supervisor.

Karen Tereposky, a Calgary employment lawyer and Senior Associate at Samfiru Tumarkin LLP, examined the ruling with Canadian HR Reporter’s Jeffrey Smith.

Interview Notes

• Worker’s complaint wasn’t taken seriously: Tereposky noted that the company seemed to shirk their legal obligation to properly investigate the staff member’s allegations of sexual harassment. “For example, it looks like there were [inappropriate] text messages for which they could have asked, and they could have seen if there were other witnesses…Some employers would even use a third-party investigator, which, honestly, is the best way to do it — you can use a lawyer or there are [independent] workplace investigators.”
• No hard rules for workplace discrimination: Tereposky explained that compensation for lost wages from discrimination isn’t supposed to be a wrongful dismissal analysis. “[The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal is] trying to put [the worker] in a position that she would have been in had the discrimination not occurred, which is a difficult task…It’s a lot of crystal-ball gazing and not very scientific — I got the feeling from reading the decision that [1 year’s pay] is what the worker asked for and that’s what [the tribunal] granted.”
• A costly and easily avoidable mistake: “Ultimately, employers need to take these kinds of complaints seriously — even if you conduct an investigation and you find out there’s nothing to it, you still have to look into it,” Tereposky said. “And that might seem like a lot of bother, but the alternative is ending up with a $50,000 judgment against you versus maybe putting in $1,000 worth of time and resources into it on the front end — it’s always better to deal with things on the front end than to get these kinds of bad decisions against you as an employer.”

Related Resources

For further insights and discussions related to this topic, explore the following resources:

• Workplace Investigations: What Canadians Need to Know
• Harassment in the Workplace: Employee Guide
• Workplace Discrimination: Your Rights & Next Steps
• Workplace Reprisals in Ontario, Alberta & British Columbia