Katharine Mack

On January 1, 2021 the Workplace Harassment and Violence Prevention Regulations (“Regulations”) under the Canada Labour Code came into effect.  These Regulations significantly expanded obligations of federally regulated employers with respect to preventing and responding to violence and harassment in the workplace.

Federal employers now have broad obligations to prevent, investigate and respond to incidents of workplace violence and harassment.  The Regulations also impose a new requirement on federal employers to provide an annual report regarding workplace violence and harassment to the Minister of Labour by March 1 of every year (“Annual Report”).

The federal government has published Form LAB1206, “Employer’s Annual Harassment and Violence Occurrence Report (EAHVOR)”, which may be used to complete the Annual Report.  The Form can be found here.

In brief, the Annual Report must include the following information:

(a) the organization’s name or business name;

(b) the organization’s business number

(c) the name of a person who can be contacted in respect of the report; and

(d) the following information respecting the occurrences for which a Notice of Occurrence was provided in the preceding calendar year:

(i) the total number of occurrences,

(ii) the number of occurrences that were related, respectively, to sexual harassment and violence and non-sexual harassment and violence,

(iii) the number of occurrences that resulted in the death of an employee,

(iv) if known, the number of occurrences that fell under each prohibited ground of discrimination set out in subsection 3(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act,

(v) the locations where the occurrences took place, specifying the total number of occurrences that took place in each location,

(vi) the types of professional relationships that existed between the principal and responding parties, specifying the total number for each type,

(vii) the means by which resolution processes were completed (e.g. negotiated resolution, conciliation, workplace assessment, investigator report) and, for each of those means, the number of occurrences involved by those means, and

(viii) the average time, expressed in months, that it took to complete the resolution process for an occurrence.

If you have not yet begun to compile the necessary information to complete the Annual Report, you may wish to do so in order to meet the March 1, 2022 deadline.

As a reminder, federally regulated employers have additional pre-existing annual filing requirements which are also due by March 1 of each year, namely an annual Workplace Committee Report and Hazardous Occurrence Report must be filed.  The relevant forms can be found here and here.

This client update is provided for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. If you have any questions about the above, please contact a member of our Labour and Employment group.

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