GEOG 128 - Human Geography: Space, Place and Community - Fall 2023

Matt kept the operable window in his office open all the time because he needed unlimited access to fresh air. This was terminated after a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system was installed in his Government of Canada office building. Once Matt's access to fresh air was mechanically controlled through externally developed air quality standards, the workplace became a barrier for him. Matt was diagnosed with a disability known as environmental sensitivity because he became ill every time he spent more than 45 minutes inside his office building. Yet, according to a textually mediated assessment of Matt's workplace performed by a Compliance Review Officer from the Canadian Human Rights Commission, his workplace was barrier-free. Using Dorothy E. Smith's institutional ethnography, this paper explicates how the social organization of workplace accommodation and compliance--processes that were developed to promote inclusion--are exclusionary.

November 08, 2022 From September 2021 to July 2022, the Canadian Human Rights Commission conducted an Employment Equity Employment Systems Review, and this report highlights the findings and the results. This report focuses on the experiences of Indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, Black and racialized persons, women, and members of the 2SLGBTQI community.

The Progress Report documents not only the actions we have taken, but also the results we have achieved, and the next steps we will pursue to maintain our momentum. It also demonstrates that while we have completed some of the items in our Anti-Racism Action Plan, our efforts have awakened us to additional steps we can take to embed the principles of anti-racism, inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility into everything we do and everything we are.

More than three decades after the term “employment equity” was coined, the effects of systemic discrimination continue to be seen across the labour market. Gaps in representation and pay for marginalized groups remain stubbornly high, and year after year employment is the most litigated area of discrimination at the BC Human Rights Tribunal.