The Essence of Reasonable Accommodation for People with Disabilities in the Canadian Workplace in the Early 1980s:

A Comparison to Reasonable Accommodation in Religious Practices

Abstract

This paper reveals how the concept of “reasonable accommodation,” which had been used in cases of employment discrimination based on creed, was applied to cases of employment discrimination based on disability. It also examines the criteria for the “reasonableness” in “reasonable accommodation” during the initial years of implementation of the concept in Canada. The cases of discrimination on the basis of creed created the logic of “constructive discrimination,” and the logic was included as a provision of the Ontario Human Rights Code amended in 1981. The provision was referenced in the government discussion regarding the creation of a new provision regarding disability discrimination. At the board of inquiry, the provision regarding disability discrimination was interpreted to mean that it implicitly requires an employer to reasonably accommodate an employee. Due to this provision, in the cases of discrimination on the basis of disability, the employers were ordered to ignore the employee’s ability to perform non-essential duties; to assess the abilities of handicapped employees on an individual basis; to take appropriate steps to establish the correct condition of the disability during the process of assessment of the ability to perform the duties of the job. These accommodations were thought to be reasonable. In the cases of discrimination on the basis of creed, however, accommodating to the point of undue hardship was the criterion of the “reasonableness” in the “reasonable accommodation.”