“Mental illness and disabilities should be treated comparably to physical illnesses and disabilities in employer-employee relationships, regardless of whether the way they are treated medically is comparable.”
So says Victor Kim, an employment and labour lawyer at McMillan LLP in Toronto, after an Ontario arbitrator ruled that a collective agreement provision allowing employees to reschedule vacation if they fall physically sick or get injured discriminated against employees who suffer from mental illness during a scheduled vacation.
The Halton Regional Police Services Board (HRPSB) oversees the operations of the police force in Halton Region, Ont. The board has separate collective agreements covering uniformed and civilian employees, who are represented by the same union.
