Over the past year, there have been a number of positive changes that have happened in the world; New Zealand, France and Uruguay have all legalized same-sex marriage, but with LGBT employment issues and youth suicides front page news there is still work to be done.

In almost 80 countries around the world, loving someone of the same sex is still considered illegal, at times involving lifetime imprisonment and, in nine countries, it is even punishable by death. South of the Canadian boarder there are still issues of discrimination that LGBT employees face. In the USA, only sixteen (and the District of Columbia) out of fifty states have statutes that protect against both sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in employment in the public and private sector. Pride at Work Canada is proud to work with many of Canada’s largest employers to create inclusive workplaces that celebrate our differences, allow employees to bring their whole self to work and make a positive impact on the LGBT community and, as a result, the corporate environment on the whole.

Pride at Work Canada is delighted to be a Community Partner with Foundation Émergence, the organization that began International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia in Quebec, in 2005. Pride at Work Canada looks forward to another year of working with more companies across Canada to improve the climate of inclusiveness for LGBT employees in the workplace.

The LGBT Inclusion Index will be launched via a webinar at the end of May and will be exclusively open to Partners of Pride at Work Canada. After one year, non-Partners will also be able to participate, paying an administrative fee to enter. By completing the 25 question online survey, Partners will be able to assess their progress using a variety of good practice indicators. Your organization’s results will be confidential, and for Partners who participate- a complimentary benchmarking meeting will be scheduled with Pride at Work Canada staff to discuss your results and identify areas of improvement for the year ahead.

On May 29th from 12-1:30pm EDT, join us for an exclusive webinar where Executive Director Brent Chamberlain will launch Pride at Work Canada’s LGBT Inclusion Index.

To register, please click here.

What gets measured gets done

The main goals of the LGBT Inclusion Index are:

1.  To provide additional value to our current Partners by establishing the leading benchmarking tool for LGBT workplace inclusion in Canada;

2.  To celebrate achievements of leading Canadian employers in the area of LGBT workplace diversity and inclusion, and;

3.  To raise the bar on LGBT workplace inclusion in Canada by providing specific advice and expertise to Pride at Work Canada’s Partners in the area of sexual orientation and gender identity & expression.

We hope that all of our Partners will participate in this exciting program this June.

For more information on Pride at Work Canada’s LGBT Inclusion Index, please contact Brent Chamberlain.

“At Cineplex, we’ve built an award-winning culture by creating an equitable, supportive environment in which all employees can feel free to be themselves,” said Ellis Jacob, president and CEO, Cineplex Entertainment.  “We believe a safe, welcoming and open environment is best for all employees – and that includes members of the LGBT communities.”

Cineplex Entertainment joins Pride at Work Canada’s nearly 50 Partners who employ 850, 000 Canadians between them and are committed to creating workplaces where LGBT employees can reach their full potential.

Learn more about Cineplex Entertainment’s vision for an inclusive workplace.

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McCarthy Tétrault First Canadian Law Firm to Appoint Chief Diversity and Engagement Officer

Toronto, February 6, 2013 — McCarthy Tétrault is delighted to announce the appointment of Lisa Vogt to the newly established role of Chief Diversity and Engagement Officer (CDO). A member of the firm’s diversity team since 2005, Vogt has served as chair for the past four years. McCarthy Tétrault is the first Canadian law firm to appoint a CDO.

“Lisa’s appointment highlights our ongoing emphasis and commitment to diversity and our focus on creating an inclusive environment at McCarthy Tétrault,” said Marc-André Blanchard, Chair and CEO. “In her new role, Lisa will continue to develop, strengthen and promote McCarthy Tétrault’s commitment to diversity as a core value of the firm”.

Vogt’s mandate will include advancing the Firm’s strategic diversity priority of recruiting, retaining and advancing a diverse team of lawyers, building on already-successful initiatives like the firm’s parental leave program and its affinity networks, which currently include its Pride Network and Asian Affinity Group. In addition, she will drive the Firm’s Corporate Social Responsibility program and McCarthy Tétrault’s alumni efforts. Lisa will also continue her commercial real estate practice. As a senior partner, she most recently acted as the Practice Group Lead of the Real Property & Planning Group.

“Ensuring we live our commitment to diversity on a daily basis is bigger than any one person or team — it’s about ingraining inclusivity into our day-to-day culture,” says Lisa Vogt. “Over the last eight years, we have made enormous strides with our diversity initiatives. But diversity is not a committee; it’s about all of us, a cultural mindset. I’m thrilled to be able to take our engagement to the next level in my role as Chief Diversity and Engagement Officer. Together, with my colleagues, we are going to continue to build a diverse and inclusive environment.”

McCarthy Tétrault fosters a professional environment that attracts women and sustains and supports their career development. In 2012, McCarthy Tétrault joined a number of leading Canadian corporations by signing the Catalyst Accord, pledging that 20% to 30% of its Board of Partners will be women by 2017. McCarthy Tétrault was the first Canadian law firm to make this commitment. It is also one of the Founding Members of the Canadian Institute of Diversity and Inclusion.

The appointment of a CDO reflects the innovative leadership and progressive management of McCarthy Tétrault, including its Senior Leadership Team, who will work closely with Vogt in her new mandate.

Click here for more information.

On June 19, 2012, Ontario amended its Human Rights Code to add “gender identity” and “gender expression” as prohibited grounds of discrimination (amendments collectively known as “Toby’s Act”).

While the Ontario legislature clearly intended Toby’s Act to offer explicit human rights protection to socio-economically vulnerable transgendered people (who were previously protected under the grounds of “sex” and/or “disability”), it’s notable that neither “gender identity” nor “gender expression’ are defined in the Act.

The scope of protection offered by “gender identity” can likely be discerned from older case law involving transgendered persons decided under “sex” and/or “disability”. Though Manitoba and the North West Territories have also recently amended their human rights legislation to protect “gender identity”, the term is similarly undefined in their legislation, and as of writing, no cases have been reported that interpret the provisions.

“Gender expression”, however, is unique to Ontario’s Human Rights Code and has no parallel anywhere else in Canada, which leaves many to wonder about its precise scope and meaning.

If “gender identity” and “gender expression” are separate grounds of discrimination, but are both intended to protect transgendered people, then why did the Ontario legislature use two different terms? The Toby’s Act debate transcripts are not clear, and until the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal rules definitively on the meaning of “gender expression” vis-à-vis “gender identity”, human resources, legal, and diversity professionals can only speculate.

Meaning of “Gender Expression” and “Gender Identity”

GLADD (the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) defines the two terms as follows:

“Gender identity: One’s internal, personal sense of being a man or a woman (or a boy or a girl). For transgender people, their birth-assigned sex and their own internal sense of gender identity do not match.

Gender expression: An external manifestation of one’s gender identity, usually expressed through ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’ or gender-variant behavior, clothing, hairstyle, voice or body characteristics. Typically, transgender people seek to make their gender expression match their gender identity, rather than their birth-assigned sex.”

Put another way, an expert witness in a past Tribunal case described gender expression as a “social issue”, while the spectrums of gender identity disorder are a “medical condition”. Indeed, past case law involving transgendered people and gender identity in particular has been heavily influenced by psychiatric medical diagnoses.

With this in mind, “gender expression”, as a separate ground, may protect how one informs the world of their gender. For example, this could occur by wearing clothing or having a hair style not commonly associated with a particular gender (e.g. an anatomical male wearing a woman’s pant-suit, or vice versa). It could also occur more subtly by wearing (or not wearing) makeup or certain gender-associated accessories, such as ties, jewelry, and so forth.

Given the wealth of academic literature on society’s deeply-held binary understanding of gender (that is, male or female with nothing in between) and how this understanding has systemically disadvantaged transgendered people, the new ground of “gender expression” could, depending on the interpretation adopted by the Tribunal, give a legally-protected shock to these traditionally-held views.

One must ask, however, whether an individual could claim protection independently under “gender expression” without also needing to fall under the scope of “gender identity”. While this could extend human rights protection to individuals who lack a gender-related medical diagnosis (such as those who self-identity as “gender queer”), once again, the scope and applicability of this ground remains a question for the Tribunal to decide.

What Does this Mean for Employers?

Despite the current uncertainty about the precise scope of the protection based on “gender identity” and “gender expression”, following the Toby’s Act amendments employers should still review their policies as they relate to appearance, dress code, uniforms, and even pronoun usage in official company documents.

Policies or practices that mandate washroom or change room use according to anatomical gender should receive particularly careful attention. Even if there is no immediate need, employers should still devise a suitable washroom and/or change room accommodation plan, and employees should be made aware of the plan so as not to cause alarm or concern in the event it is utilized.

Above all, when considering the flexibility of a certain policy or practice with respect to accommodating the needs of employees falling under the Toby’s Act amendments, employers should be careful not to jump to conclusions about what is or is not undue hardship.

Although “gender identity” and “gender expression” remain undefined, the Toby’s Act debates show that the legislature is quite concerned about socio-economic vulnerability of transgendered people. Simply put, any undue hardship argument about customer or employee discomfort will likely be met by skepticism from the Tribunal in light of the wealth of academic literature detailing the systemic misunderstanding and stereotyping transgendered people face.

Proactive employers should consider training management and employees on gender identity generally, and in particular the hardships associated with an individual’s gender transition (especially at work). This will not only show the Tribunal that the employer took the Toby’s Act amendments seriously should a complaint ever arise, but more importantly, it will build on existing respectful workplace efforts to ensure that transgendered employees feel safe and welcome at work.

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Ryan Edmonds is an Employment and Labour Lawyer in Heenan Blaikie’s Toronto office, where his practice encompasses all aspects of workplace advocacy, investigation, and training. He sat on the Board of Out on Bay Street and is a Section Executive of the Ontario Bar Association’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee. Ryan can be reached at REdmonds@heenan.ca or 416.777.4189.

The event took place on Nov. 21 and attracted attendees from a variety of health care organizations and hospitals from Toronto area who brainstormed together and shared good practice on sexual orientation and gender identity inclusion initiatives in their workplaces.

“Today, we hope to start an open and honest discussion about LGBT workplace inclusion in the healthcare sector, and to begin to develop good practice and supportive networks in the healthcare industry,” says Brent Chamberlain, Executive Director at Pride at Work Canada and event co-organizer.

Guest speaker Stacey Daub, CEO of Toronto Central Community Care Access Centre, spoke of her organization’s work and the challenges they faced in their quest to create a truly inclusive workplace.

“I believe that the experience of our patients is inextricably linked to the experience of our employees, and if you’re really committed to providing compassionate care, you need to start from within to create an environment that has compassion and respect for individuals at its core,” says Daub.

“We need to be deliberate about providing inclusive workplaces,” says Daub. “It’s about creating organizations where people feel they can bring their whole selves to work. It’s more than a plan, a role and a framework. It’s measured by experience and making the client and staff experience connection. It’s everyone’s job – every day, and every moment,” she says.

Angela Robertson, Equity and Community Engagement Director at WCH and the event co-organizer, says that LGBT employment inclusion initiatives are important because a disengaged or dissatisfied workforce can negatively affect the culture within which care is provided and the quality of care received by patients.

“At Women’s we believe that supporting diversity, inclusion and being an advocate and supporter of LGBT issues in the workplace is about rejecting homophobia and discrimination and affirming human rights and access,” says Robertson. “This round table is a brilliant start in building collaboration across health-care organizations to support inclusion of LGBT workers and volunteers.”

Building on the momentum gathered by the group, participants looked forward to continuing the conversation, expanding the network to include others interested in LGBT workplace inclusion and making commitments to share forthcoming good practices.

“The session was excellent,” says Lana De Meo, Human Resources Business Partner at Baycrest. “Sharing experiences with other organizations and what they have done so far is quite an eye-opener. I’m excited to bring what I learned back to work.”

If you would like to see Pride at Work Canada help organize an industry roundtable for your sector, please email info@prideatwork.ca.

Pride at Work Canada is delighted to announce that Brent Chamberlain, Executive Director of Pride at Work Canada, has been named the Leaders to be Proud of LGBTQ Workplace Advocate of 2012. One of Canada’s highest recognitions for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, queer and ally (LGBTQA) professionals, it recognizes excellence of senior executives in the Canadian LGBTQA professional community. The Leaders to be Proud of Selection Committee is comprised of professional leaders in the community, including Anne-Marie Vanier of RBC, Christine Wilson of the CBC, Gary Rodrigues a leading publishing consultant, John Clifford a Partner at McMillian LLP and Matt Petersen, the Chair of Pride at Work Canada.

“This recognition is a testament to the profound impact Brent’s work continues to have on creating more inclusive workplaces for LGBT identified professionals, across the country,” says Matt Petersen, Pride at Work Canada’s Chair. “Brent’s commitment, professionalism, and expertise are contributing to realizing a nation where LGBT identified individuals can achieve their full potential. Pride at Work Canada is very proud of Brent’s abilities and many accomplishments.”

Brent joined Pride at Work Canada in August 2010 when he returned to his hometown of Toronto after living in London, England. Previously, Brent was a manager with Stonewall, Britain’s leading lesbian, gay and bisexual charity, where he wrote several workplace publications, including Workplace Equality Index and Bisexual People in the Workplace, working alongside the 600+ members of the Diversity Champions

ABOUT the Leaders to be Proud of Awards:

Out on Bay Street and Deloitte have launched their annual awards series “Leaders to be Proud of” which recognize excellence in Canada’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans-identified (LGBT) business community.

Specifically, the awards honour senior LGBT executives and allies who have made significant professional contributions both to business and the LGBT community. Out on Bay Street would like Pride at Work Canada’s network to help identifying these individuals across the country. For more information on the Leaders to be Proud of Awards, please visit their website.

Pride at Work Canada’s Executive Director Brent Chamberlain says, “LGBT employees still face many challenges at work. These include being trapped in the corporate closet, unfair stereotyping and, in some cases, homophobic and transphobic harassment”. He adds that many employers, as part of their focus on embedding diversity into their corporate culture, have made great strides in eliminating this type of behaviour. In fact, many are now working to take pro-active steps to educate their staff on the issues many LGBT employees face at work.

This hasn’t happened without strong leadership – both at the individual and organizational level. In this regard, within the past few years, Calgary has started to show its true colours. Calvin Campbell, a Director with Pride at Work Canada says “through the leadership of companies like TD, TELUS and Deloitte, the Calgary business community has firmly embraced the LGBT community as something to celebrate not merely tolerate”.  These companies have sought to engage straight allies who can champion the cause of LGBT equality at work, something many LGBT leaders are still not comfortable doing, says Mr. Campbell.

To further emphasize the trend, Pride at Work Canada proudly announces today that Shell Canada Limited has become its 45^th National Partner and the first to be headquartered in Calgary. Shell Canada joins a diverse group of leading organizations including Loblaw Companies, IBM and The Home Depot that work with Pride at Work Canada to foster LGBT-inclusive workplaces.

As wine glasses clink during ProPRIDE Calgary, conversation will most certainly turn to how things have changed in the past few years and how, with the support of companies like Pride at Work Canada’s Partners, LGBT Calgarians may not need to hide in the corporate closet for much longer

Notes:

A media kit containing more information about Pride at Work Canada, including contact details, can be found here.

Committee members will be expected to donate at least three hours per month in order to participate in identifying key objectives and help plan events. The first meeting, which will be held via teleconference, is scheduled for September.

The committee particularly welcomes applications from outside of Ontario and, while we appreciate the support of trans allies, we ask that only trans-identified individuals apply at this time.

Anyone who is interested in joining should contact Committee Chair, Brad Sensabaugh directly:

Trans Strategy Committee

Chair: Brad Sensabaugh

brad.sensabaugh@prideatwork.ca

(T) 416-778-8397

This is exactly why we launched Canada’s largest LGBT Career Site last July and are delighted that it now features thousands of jobs from nearly two dozen of our Partners. As we continue to develop the site, we will shortly launch a ‘Find jobs now’ button on all completed Partner Profiles pages so that LGBT talent browsing our website can be taken directly to your most current job offerings. If you organization doesn’t have a Partner Profile page or your jobs do not appear on our career site, please contact us directly.

OUT ON BAY STREET

Attracting diverse talent at the graduate or student level is also a top priority of many of our Partners. Out on Bay Street, one of Pride at Work Canada’s Community Partners, is a non-profit focused on providing opportunities and resources for LGBT students in business, law and technology.

Their signature event, an Annual Conference and Case Competition, is held each year in Toronto and attracts hundreds of LGBT students from across the country. The Conference represents a great way for employers to promote their inclusiveness amongst the student population.

This year’s event will be held at the Toronto Marriott Eaton Center on September 7th and 8th and will include keynote speakers such as Salah Bachir and Maggie Cassella.

For more details on how your organization can get involved, including how to sponsor the event, please go to their website, or you can contact Michael Mirpuri directly.