The firing was lawful. It was the parting words that cost him
The firing itself was not the problem. It was the insult that came with it. A single slur, delivered as a business owner was let go, was enough for Ontario's Human Rights Tribunal to find sex discrimination, even though she was never technically an employee.
In a decision dated June 2, 2026, Vice-Chair Lavinia Inbar of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario found a company president liable for discriminating against a self-employed contractor because of sex, and ordered him to pay $300 for injury to her dignity, feelings and self-respect. The broader claims of sexual harassment and reprisal were dismissed.
The woman at the centre of the case did not work for the respondents in any conventional sense. She ran her own business services company and provided property management and consulting work to a group of companies under a series of written working agreements. The documentary record, Inbar noted, pointed to a relationship closer to that of an independent contractor than an employee.
That distinction did not put her outside the Code. Inbar held that human rights protection reaches well beyond traditional employer-employee arrangements, and that the right to contract without discrimination under section 3 of the Code can cover independent contractors. The relationship, she found, fell within the social area of employment, the social area of contracts, or both.
The companies...
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