On October 29, 2015, Morgan Rowe and Dayna Steinfeld will be presenting a LEAF at Work workshop at the Glebe Collegiate Institute. LEAF at Work is a one-hour workshop for high school students focused on equality rights and issues of discrimination and harassment in the workplace.  

LEAF – the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund. LEAF is a Canadian non-profit organization, formed in 1985, that works towards advancing the equality of women and girls in Canada through using the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. LEAF’s work focuses on litigation, law reform efforts and public legal education programs.

On November 12, 2015, Michael Fisher presented on an Artists’ Legal Services Ottawa (“ALSO”) Labour and Employment Law for Artists panel. Michael was joined on the panel by Catherine Mensour, of the Mensour Agency, and Sonia Ndongmo, an Ottawa-based vocalist. The panel discussion focused on how legal obligations related to working relationships can be crucial to defining an artist’s rights and obligations.

On November 18, 2015, Kim Patenaude will be speaking at a Reach Canada Education Seminar on the topic of individual disabilities in the workplace. Kim will provide an overview of invisible disabilities and discuss employee and employer rights and responsibilities with respect to disclosure, the duty to accommodate and discrimination. More information is available here.

The Ontario Court of Appeal recently heard the appeal brought by the Public Service Alliance of Canada challenging the constitutionality of the Expenditure Restraint Act. This legislation was introduced by the Federal Government in 2009 to cap wage increases in future collective agreements and roll-back increases previously agreed to by the parties in existing collective agreements. The appeal is one of three being heard across the country with respect to this legislation.

PSAC was represented by Andrew Raven and Andrew Astritis of our firm.

On November 25, 2015, Kim Patenaude will be speaking as part of a panel on “Disclosure of Medical and Personal Information: Rights of Employees and Employers” at the 2015 National Healthcare Labour & Employee Relations conference held by Insight. The panel will discuss privacy policy in the healthcare sector, how it stands out from other industries, what information the employer can and cannot request and how to effectively manage business with the presence of strict privacy and information disclosure policies. 

Andrew Astritis recently delivered a guest lecture in an upper-year Labour Law course at the University of Ottawa. The lecture addressed workers’ rights under section 2(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including a discussion of the implications of the Supreme Court of Canada’s recently released trilogy of cases on this issue. Andrew Astritis appeared as co-counsel with Andrew Raven before the Supreme Court of Canada in each of these cases on behalf of the Public Service Alliance of Canada.

RavenLaw was proud to again support the Annual Ottawa Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (“LEAF”) Persons Day Breakfast. This year’s breakfast, part of LEAF’s 30^th anniversary year, focused on issues of access to affordable housing and the homelessness crisis in Canada.  

LEAF is a charitable non-profit organization that works to advance the equality rights of women and girls in Canada. The annual fundraising breakfast commemorates the Persons Case – the October 18, 1929 decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council that ruled that women were to be considered persons under the law and should be eligible to sit in the Canadian Senate. Proceeds from the Persons Day breakfast support LEAF’s litigation efforts and help to sustain local equality education programs, such as LEAF at Work and Only Yes Means Yes.

Our office will be closed on Friday, December 11th from 1:30 pm  to 5:00 pm. We will return to regular office hours on Monday, December 14th.

On November 6, 2015, Morgan Rowe will be presenting a guest lecture in the University of Ottawa – Faculty of Common Law’s “Human Rights” class, as part of the class on emerging topics in human rights. This is the fourth year that Morgan has been invited to speak as part of this class. Her presentation will be focusing on topics related to sexual orientation, asexuality, and the regulation of personal relationships.

On December 11, 2015, David Yazbeck will be speaking at the Canadian Association of University Teachers (“CAUT”) Defending a Diverse Membership Forum for Senior Grievance Officers on “How to Identify and Win Systemic Discrimination Cases”. David’s session will examine how to confront the difficult problem of subtle forms of structural discrimination in the workplace. More information on the Forum is available here.