TORONTO, September 25, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – “Should religious organizations be allowed to have a say on the sex lives and life choices of their employees? Are veganism, ethical humanism or pacifism creeds? Can a school tell a student he or she can’t bring a same-sex partner to the prom?”
These are just a sampling of the questions that the Ontario Human Right Commission (OHRC) is setting out to answer in a new online survey, which is part of a larger 2-3 year effort to re-evaluate the definition and treatment of “creed” in the Ontario Human Rights Code.
Other questions mentioned in a press release announcing the effort include:
– “How much can co-workers talk about their faith while at work before it violates other people’s rights?”
– “How does a person know if their comments on religion in the workplace, or when providing a service, have crossed a line and become harassment?”
– “Can prayers be held within public schools during school hours?”
“Creed is one of the Code’s prohibited grounds of discrimination,” the OHRC says in a new document outlining emerging issues related to human rights and religious rights focused on the definition of creed.
“The Code does not define it,” the document says, “but the OHRC defined the term creed in its 1996 Policy on creed and the accommodation of religious observances as ‘religious creed’ or ‘religion,’ broadly conceived.”
The OHRC says that while every Ontarian, according to the 1996 policy, has a right to be free from “discriminatory or harassing behaviour that is based on religion or which arises because the person who is the target of the behaviour does not share the same faith (including atheists and agnostics),” the same policy goes on to state that creed “does not include secular, moral or ethical beliefs or political convictions.”
While the OHRC says that most tribunal and court human rights decisions have interpreted “creed” as meaning the same as “religion,” in keeping with the OHRC’s 1996 policy position, recent cases that involved non-religious belief systems, such as veganism (Ketenci v. Ryerson University, 2012 HRTO 994) and political beliefs (Al-Dandachi v. SNC-Lavalin Inc., 2012 ONSC 6534), have prompted the OHRC to consider a redefinition of “creed” to mean a stated belief in just about anything.
The announcement of the online survey comes on the heels of a controversial ruling from the province’s Human Rights Commission that determined that atheism is, in fact, a creed.
In the case of R.C. v. District School Board of Niagara, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario found that atheism has religious protection equal to that of Christianity, Judaism, Islam and other religions. It declared that the Niagara school board was guilty of discrimination under the Human Rights Code for not allowing the “creed” of atheism to be equally available to its students.
The ruling stemmed from a complaint by a Niagara region parent who objected to the availability of Gideon Bibles at his daughter’s school. The tribunal ruled that the board cannot hand out Bibles unless the school board revises its policies to facilitate the distribution of atheistic texts as well.
“If it [the school board] is prepared to distribute permission forms proposing the distribution of Christian texts to committed atheists, it must also be prepared to distribute permission forms proposing the distribution of atheist texts to religious Christians,” wrote David Wright, OHRT associate chairman, in a decision handed down on August 13.
“It cannot design its criteria in a way that would permit communication of materials setting out their beliefs by some, but not all creeds,” Wright stated.
“Courts and tribunals have also recognized a wide variety of religious and spiritual beliefs under human rights legislation and the Charter, including Aboriginal spiritual practices, Wiccans, Raelians, and Falun Gong practitioners,” said the OHRC in its “Human rights and Creed” backgrounder.
“There appears to be nothing in the Code-based case law that would prevent the OHRC from redefining creed more broadly and inclusively in its updated policy.”
Prominent critics of human rights tribunals have labeled them “kangaroo courts,” and argued that they should be disbanded because numerous tribunal decisions have been declared unjust, reversed, and highly criticized by courts of law.
In a landmark ruling in 2010, the Ontario Divisional Court threw out an Ontario Human Rights Tribunal decision against Christian Horizons, a faith-based ministry that operates more than 180 residential homes for people with developmental disabilities.
The OHRT had ruled that Christian Horizons could not insist on requirements for moral behavior in its hiring policy, nor require employees to sign contracts agreeing to such requirements, and fined the evangelical social service agency $23,000.
The Divisional Court ruled in favor of Christian Horizons' appeal and reversed the OHRT's decision.
In 2011, the Ontario Superior Court threw out an OHRT decision to fine an employer $36,000 over her company’s dress code and a “restrictive microwave policy.”
Superior Court Justice Anne Molloy said that it was “simply not possible to logically follow the pathway taken by the adjudicator,” and outlined nine points on which the tribunal adjudicator in the case “failed to provide a fair hearing or made legal errors.”
“The reasons are so sparse on the factual underpinnings for this aspect [the company's microwave use policy] of the decision that it is impossible to follow the pathway by which the adjudicator came to his conclusion of discrimination,” wrote Justice Molloy on behalf of the three-judge panel.
Ezra Levant, a lawyer and former publisher of the Western Standard who was himself a target of a human rights complaint in the past, said the court ruling is just more evidence that Canada’s human rights commissions are “out of control.”
“Overturning the tribunal’s order isn’t enough. The tribunal itself should be disbanded,” Levant told LSN at the time.
The OHRC “Creed Human Rights Survey” is available here.
Related:
Ontario tribunal bans Bible distribution unless school board also gives out atheist texts
Ontario Superior Court strikes down, lambastes ‘fatally flawed’ Human Rights Tribunal ruling
Ontario Christian Ministry Wins Appeal against Human Rights Tribunal Ruling