An Exploratory Empirical Study of the Judicial Treatment of Requests for Reasonable Accommodation in the Workplace

This article presents the findings of an exploratory empirical study of a sample of labour law decisions involving reasonable accommodation, made over a period of fifteen years. More than 400 decisions were identified and analyzed using a standardized grid, to find out which players, sectors and jurisdictions were most affected by applications that led to judicial or quasi-judicial decisions, and which reasons were the most frequently given in support of the applications. The author also explores the hypothesis that a shift in the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada since 2007-2008 with respect to the legal criteria applicable has had an impact on some of the indicators studied, including the number of decisions made and the outcome of each dispute. After a descriptive analysis of the overall results, the author looks more specifically at the decisions relating to requests made for accommodation on religious grounds.