On September 16, the Queen’s Centre for Law in the Contemporary Workplace (CLCW) conference, titled “Frontiers of Human Rights in Canadian Workplaces,” will bring leading-edge research to practitioners and policy-makers. Labour and employment lawyers, labour relations specialists, government officials, academics and students will hear in-depth analysis of how rights to reasonable accommodation of disability, religion and family status affects employers, employees an unions in Canadian workplaces today.

“We chose this topic because Centre researchers and Advisory Committee members have identified developments in the human rights law and remedies that will pose significant challenges for employers, unions and workers in coming years,” says CLCW director Professor Kevin Banks.  “We wanted to bring the research, policy and practitioner communities together to take an in-depth look at these issues.”

Attendees will hear from a wide spectrum of leading academics, practitioners and policy analysts drawn from across Canada. Keynote speaker Professor Denise Réaume from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law will open the conference by giving a paper on whether the legal framework of human rights law can bear the load that expanding ideas of equal opportunity are placing on it. The conference will then move to a series of four different panel discussions.

Banks describes the event as tackling important emerging issues for anti-discrimination law in the workplace.  “The conference will look at the challenges posed by freedom of religion for employers seeking to respect the equality rights of all employees, or for public sector employers in a secular state,” he says. “It will examine the challenges of integrating workers with mental ill health. Also, we will consider what protection against family status discrimination means for employers and whether it is likely to meet the needs of today's working women and men, and whether arbitrators and human rights tribunals are getting human rights remedies right.”

To learn more about the conference or to register, visit the CLCW website.