“If an employer has a set accommodation process, every set process typically will have a mechanism where if the medical information is deemed insufficient, there is a protocol to address that – you can’t jump to that protocol without exhausting the regular steps, because otherwise you’re discriminating and you’re treating that situation differently than the policy that you’ve created.”
So says Michael Penner, a labour and employment lawyer at Levitt LLP who frequently practices in the North, after the Northwest Territories Human Rights Adjudication Panel found that an employer discriminated against a worker by asking for detailed medical information on a return-to-work form.
The worker was a laboratory technician at Inuvik Regional Hospital in Inuvik, NT, hired in September 2017.
