Rights Freedoms and Responsibilities

1. Rights Freedoms and Responsibilities Pages: 122-127 By: Colin Bell, Nathan Vincent, Keisha Murphy, John Gaudet, Breanne Lewis and Lindsay Stetson

2. Definitions • Undue Hardship- A result of a change that would affect the economic liability of an enterprise or produce a greater risk of health and safety that outweighs the benefit. • Harassment- Persistent behavior that violates the human rights of the victim. • Sexual Harassment- Unwelcomed sexual contact or remarks made towards a person

3. Accommodate- Eliminate or adjust requirements to enable a person to carry out the duties of an activity or a job. • Poisoned Environment- An uncomfortable or a disturbing atmosphere caused by unwanted or negative comments or behavior by others.

4. Duty to Accommodate • The supreme court of Canada ruled that an employer has a legal duty to accommodate each employees individual need. This is to say that if certain employees need certain days off or cannot perform certain tasks, then they are required to shift the schedule or duties of that person. • For example: A woman was diagnosed with Bipolar disorder and her doctor told her to cut back on her working hours. Her employers agreed and changed her hours from 37.5 hours a week to 25. In addition to her change in work schedule, her employers also agreed to change some of her duties to help take away any unnecessary stress.

5. Harassment • A very important right is the right to be free from embarrassing or annoying behavior, also known as harassment. Harassment comes in many forms such as; sexual harassment, verbal harassment (also causes poisoned environment) • Some examples of sexual harassment are: unwanted sexual touching or hugging, grabbing or touching of private parts, sexual comments about your body, spreading rumors about other people’s sexual activity, invading personal space, demanding dates or sexual favors, bragging about your sexual prowess.

6. Poisoned Environment • The Supreme Court of Canada has defined sexual harassment to include conduct that creates a hostile or “Poisoned Environment” • Example: When a co-worker ended a romantic relationship with him, a man showed intimate pictures of her on his cell phone to many other colleagues. His supervisor heard that other people had seen the pictures, but he did not see the pictures himself, so he chose to ignore the issue.

7. Accommodations • Accommodations refers to a place where people live or would like to live • All people have the right to equal treatment in accommodation • For example: If one was to be another ethnicity such as Korean and they wanted to rent an apartment from a white Canadian man, and he refused them due to their ethnicity, that would violate the Human Rights Commission

8. Facilities • Facilities are building designated for public use, such as parks, community complexes, hockey rinks, etc. Every person has a right to equal treatment and respect in a public setting • A violation of this would be: A rink manager does not give a women’s hockey team allotted ice time for practice, but instead gives the time to a men’s hockey team that plays right after.

9. Meeting Special Needs • Provincial human rights codes prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability and made it mandatory for employers to accommodate the needs of employers with any type of disabilityCase: Parents of Special Needs Students say School District Covered up Abuse.

10. Discussion Questions • Determine what human rights violation these would be: • A coach hugs one of their team players after they score a goal, this alone is harmless, however, the player didn’t welcome this contact, what would this be considered • A special needs child was not in a violent state, but the resource teacher was not in the mood to care for the child so she restrained him to a chair. • A man was fired because he had back problems and could not carry out the job he was hired to do.

11. Work Cited • www.schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/15/parents-of-special-needs-students-say-school-district-covered-up-abuse • www.ohrc.on.ca/en/policy-preventing-sexual-and-gender-based-harassment/2-identifying-sexual-harassment • www.digitialjournal.com/article/304500 • Joe Buckley, University of Pittsburg 2010 • Identifying Sexual Harassment | Ontario Human Rights Commission