Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER March 20, 2017 12 NEWS said Dutton. "e rhetoric from the United States and some parts of Canada has provided a licence for hate- mongers to mouth and voice the hatred," he said. "We've seen inci- dents on the streets in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Montreal." Employers need to be aware of the possible fallout of a ra- cially charged society, said Nadia Halum, labour lawyer at MacLeod Law Firm in Toronto. "Given the current political cli- mate, I think we'll unfortunately see a rise of these types of racial harassment occurring in different contexts," she said. "So it's defi- nitely important for companies to be proactive and know how to respond to these situations, what their obligations are." e high number of cases sub- mitted to human rights tribunals across the country is a quick in- dicator that discrimination is- sues remain a definite problem, specifically at small and medium- sized businesses where the imple- mentation of anti-discriminatory policies may be viewed as unnec- essary, said Halum. "I don't think companies are up to speed," she said. "I think there's room for improvement. When you look at medium-sized employers or small ventures, new companies, those kinds of companies are more open for liability because there's no requirement in the human rights code to have a policy." Meanwhile, rude behaviour is being perceived as acceptable as political correctness undergoes a backlash, said Tracey Epp, la- bour lawyer at Pitblado Law in Winnipeg. "In this case, the rudeness also happens to be contrary to law," she said. "I think it's going to happen again and organizations need to be ready for it. ey should have a process in place." "ey have policies and proce- dures if somebody calls in a bomb threat. ey should have a policy and procedure in place in how to deal with what happens when one customer goes after another cus- tomer, for whatever reason." Requirement to act Under Canadian human rights legislation, employers are re- quired to respond to incidents of this nature, said Epp. Manitoba's human rights code specifically states no person shall discriminate with respect to any service accessible to the public, and no one responsible for an activity can harass, knowingly permit, or fail to take reasonable steps to terminate harassment of one person by another, she said. "If the code applies to you, you are responsible to ensure that you yourself don't harass people, but you also have to make sure that no one else knowingly harasses other people on your premises," said Epp. "You have to take reasonable steps." "Places like hotels and movie theatres, wherever the public is served, they need to be ready for this kind of a thing. ey need to have policies and procedures in place that dictate what happens if there is an incident." While not liable for any mali- cious comments , a company's re- sponse measures or lack thereof could become the subject of a lawsuit. If reasonable steps are not undertaken, an organiza- tion could face a human rights complaint, with the potential of a monetary penalty, said Halum. "Service providers have an ob- ligation to take prompt, effectual and proportionate action when they become aware of racial slurs or harassment," she said. "ere's no magic one-size-fits-all ap- proach, but the main thing is an employer should take reasonable steps to alleviate any distress that arises from the comment, and show that they're committed to maintaining an environment that's free of racial harassment." While the response does not need to be perfect, it does need to be reasonable, and often comes down to a judgment call, said Halum. "The unfortunate thing from an organization's position is they could do everything right, but if the customer still isn't satisfied, there is nothing that could stop that person from filing a complaint." In that case, organizations will be at an advantage if policies were already in place and employees were proactively trained, she said. Proactive training needed Human resources professionals need to be aware of social trends and foreseeable incidents such as these, and take a proactive ap- proach towards the training and implementation of anti-discrimi- nation policies, said Halum. At TD Bank, for instance, the teller wasn't even familiar with the slur used. "You can't really give a re- sponse if you don't even understand what the problem is," said Halum. Training can help bring em- ployees up to speed on what is considered discrimination, and enables them to work confident- ly, knowing their employer values non-discriminatory policies. "You need to understand the choices that you are making, and make some adjustments," said Shah. "You can't make those ad- justments without having knowl- edge and awareness. We can't know everything there is to know about every other culture, but we do have to be primed to ask the right questions." "is training is critical, not just because incidents are going to be on the rise, but because our population is becoming more and more diverse and we need to un- derstand one another." Ensuring service is conducted free of discrimination is a "top- down endeavour," said Epp. "First of all, you have to have a policy statement that says, 'We will not tolerate this kind of be- haviour,'" she said. "e customer is not always right. If you don't provide an atmosphere that's free of harassment and discrimina- tion, you're going to lose other customers and you're not going to be on the right side of the law." Once a policy is put in place, employees need to be empowered via training that helps them iden- tify conflict, and defer to manage- ment when necessary, said Epp. "Organizations do need to look at this and say: 'OK, if this hap- pens, what is our position? What should the consequence be?'" A good starting point would be to show the door to anyone mak- ing racist, sexist or mean-spirited remarks, said Dutton. "is is just common decorum. And it would seem to me to be a good business practice to ensure that, because if you don't, then I think you'd lose business," he said. If an employee is subjected to racist or sexist remarks, the em- ployer will eventually be subject to civil litigation or human rights legislation, said Dutton. "If an employer cannot main- tain an atmosphere of tolerance and acceptance, then staff will be subject to those remarks them- selves," he said. "So the onus is on the employer or the owner to make sure that there is respect within the organization, whether you call it a zero-tolerance policy or whether you just simply call it normal business practice to en- sure civility." Incidents require response RACISM < pg. 1

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