C-285 is fairly simple, it makes changes to the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Canada Labour Code, and the Employment Insurance Act to prevent discrimination based on medical history or conscientious belief.
Canadian Human Rights Act
We’ve got two changes to the Canadian Human Rights Act in C-285.
The first adds “conscientious belief” and “medical history” to the list of things that are prohibited grounds of discrimination, beside age, sex, religion, etc.
The second adds a new note under Accommodation of Needs that specifically deals with medical history and transportation. The Accommodation of Needs section just clarifies that it isn’t discrimination if accommodating the needs of someone would result in undue hardship. C-285 adds a new section that specifically calls out denying someone access to transportation services on the grounds of their medical history, and that that isn’t discrimination as long as it would cause undue hardship considering health, safety, and cost.
Canada Labour Code
The first change to the Canada Labour Code adds health decisions an employee has made, including those involving vaccines, to the list of things an employer can’t take action against an employee for. There’s a small exception here that this doesn’t apply if the employer has offered to make accommodations for the employee. (Easiest example here would be an employer offering to let someone who’s chosen not to get vaccinated for COVID work from home. The employer would be allowed to take action against the employee if they refused that offer.)
Speaking of working from home, C-285 specifically says that an employer needs to offer work from home duties as an accommodation if the employee can still do their job remotely. Otherwise accommodations must be made at work unless it would endanger the health and safety of other employees or cause undue hardship on the employer.
Finally C-285 makes it so that a previous infection of COVID-19 counts as being vaccinated against it if the terms of employment would require someone to be vaccinated, as long as certain conditions are met. The Minister of Labour, with the Minister of Health, can make any regulations needed regarding those conditions.
Employment Insurance Act
And the last change C-285 makes is to make it so nobody can be disqualified from EI if they lost their jobs due to making decisions related to their health.
Speaker’s Ruling
A Speaker’s Ruling was needed for C-285. It was argued that because it adds to the list of people that would receive EI payments that it would require additional spending, which a Private Member’s Bill isn’t allowed to do. The Speaker agreed with this, so C-285 would need to get Royal Recommendation first. If Royal Recommendation is not gotten before C-285 goes up for its Third Reading vote then it’ll automatically fail. Royal Recommendation needs to be requested by a Minister and is given by the Governor General.
Status
Dean chose not to proceed with C-285 on December 13, 2022. As such it was scrapped before it reached its Second Reading vote.
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