Religion and Creed

The Canadian Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of "religion". The Ontario Human Rights Code, on the other hand, prohibits discrimination on the basis of "creed". For the purposes of Canadian human rights legislation, these two terms are virtually synonymous.

In many cases involving discrimination on the basis of religion or creed, the discrimination in question is not direct, but rather, indirect discrimination. For example, where an employer requires its sales clerk to work on Saturdays and one or more of those clerks belong to a religion which recognizes Saturday as the Sabbath. If the individual is let go from their job, docked a day's pay or suffers some other disadvantage, this could amount to discrimination on the basis of religion or creed.

The Supreme Court of Canada has made it very clear, in a number of cases, that there is a very real duty imposed on employers to "reasonably accommodate" an employee's right to freedom of religion or creed, short of "undue hardship". There will be very few, if any, cases in which an employer will be successful in establishing undue hardship.

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