Other provinces such as B.C., Nova Scotia and Quebec have already introduced similar legislation, but Ontario’s is unique in several respects.

Bill 168 requires that employers take reasonable precautions to protect workers from domestic violence that may occur in the workplace and result in physical injury. And it grants workers the right to refuse to work where they feel endangered by workplace violence.

“There’s also a section that requires employers to advise employees about the risk of violence from a person with a history of violent behaviour if they encounter them in the course of employment, which is causing a lot of talk in legal firms about privacy issues,” says Owen Mahoney, associate investigator at HR Proactive, a Hamilton-based training company.

The impact of Bill 168 on Canadian and American businesses operating in Ontario is significant, says Cheryl Edwards, partner and leader of the OHS practice at Heenan Blaikie LLP, a Toronto-based law firm. “Many employers who’ve been engaging in best practices have been undertaking the types of recommendations in Bill 168 for years, but now all employers need to pay attention.”

Policy development
Organizations need to think carefully about whether their existing HR polices relating to harassment will comply with the new obligations in Bill 168, says Edwards. 

“Some believe they can take their existing anti-harassment policies and simply add workplace violence to them. But if they’re just based on human rights such as gender, race and so on, that won’t work for the new obligations. Harassment provisions have to be broadened to take other types of personal harassment into account.”

Organizations should think carefully about the kinds of investigative steps they’ll commit to taking to comply. Placing limits on these investigations in their policies and procedures should also be considered, she says.

“The reason is that violence and harassment can be very broad as defined under Bill 168, so they should think about putting in mechanisms that allow them some discretion to say: ‘We don’t think your complaint about someone looking at you the wrong way meets the threshold.’ 

Otherwise, they’ll be committing to investigating every minor event of what someone might think is harassment, instead of focusing on the real issues, which are bullying and improper behaviour in the workplace,” Edwards says.

The legislation spells out what elements need to be in a program in a fairly straightforward manner, she says. Organizations need to conduct an assessment, develop a policy, then implement a program of measures and procedures to control risk. “This will depend on the workplace: a manufacturing facility might focus on physical security, a hospital on controlling risks posed by patients, and so on.”