- Impact
- Notable Jurisprudence
Jan represents her clients collaboratively with vigor and compassion.
A sample of important cases defending workers’ rights.
Ontario English Catholic Teachers Association v. Ontario (Attorney General), 2024 ONCA 101 and the original constitutional challenge by trade unions to Bill 124.
In a collaborative effort by many trade unions, Jan was part of the team to argue that the Ontario government’s wage suppression legislation which imposed a 1% cap per year on increases to salary rates and compensation for three years for employees in the broader public sector it violated the employees ’ rights to freedom of expression (s. 2(b)), freedom of association (s. 2(d)) and equality (s. 15) under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Ontario Nurses’ Association v. Participating Nursing Homes, 2021 ONCA 148 and companion case, Participating Nursing Homes v. Ontario, 2021 ONCA 149.
The purpose of Ontario’s Pay Equity Act is to redress systemic gender discrimination. Jan and the legal team successfully argued that the Act requires employers to maintain pay equity in women-dominated workplaces by ongoing access to male comparators through the proxy comparison method.
Ontario Nurses’ Association 10 Community Care Access Centres, 2021, ONSC 5348.
On judicial review from a Pay Equity Hearings Tribunal decision which refined the role of a bargaining agent in the pay equity maintenance process in some circumstances.
Fraser v Canada (Attorney General) 2020 SCC.
On behalf of the intervenors, Women’s Legal Education Action Fund, Jan was part of the legal team which argued the significant issues for substantive gender equality including the need for a contextual reading of s.15, the equality provisions of the Charter.
Ontario Nurses Association v. Eatonville/Henley Place, 2020 ONSC.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and as the number of deaths in nursing homes was rising rapidly, the legal team represented ONA to successfully argue for an injunction requiring the Nursing Homes to stop breaches of the Health Directives issued by the Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario related to the supply of personal protective equipment including the most protective N95 respirator masks.
Canada Post Corporation v Canadian Union of Postal Workers, Pay Equity 2018 CanLII 51341.
In one of the major recent pay equity decisions, Jan collaborated with CUPW and Rural and Suburban Mail Carriers, who were mainly women, to argue the women required pay equity under the Canadian Human Rights Act. A joint pay equity study was undertaken and Canada Post challenged the results. CUPW was successful before the arbitrator who ordered Canada Post to close the 28% pay equity gap between the RSMCs and the male-dominated letter carriers.
Centrale des syndicats du Québec v. Quebec (Attorney General), 2018 SCC 18 and Quebec (Attorney General) v. Alliance du personnel professionnel et technique de la santé et des services sociaux, 2018 SCC 17.
On behalf of the intervenors, Women’s Leaf Education Action Fund and the New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity, Jan joined with Fay Faraday to successfully argue that Quebec’s delayed approach to pay equity for women-dominated workplaces and the failure to ensure full retroactivity for pay equity maintenance was a breach of the s. 15 equality provisions in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Ontario Nurses’ Association v Royal Ottawa Health Care Group – Brockville Mental Health Centre, 2014.
Jan successfully argued for interim orders to ensure that the health and safety rights of nurses, under the Workplace Violence provisions of the Occupational Health and Safety Act was not jeopardized.