Background
Jim Christie was an employee at an Albertan Dairy farm since 1980. In 1983 he joined the Worldwide Church of God and as part of his observance of the faith he had to take a number of days off work. The Dairy farm was initially accommodating but when he tried to take off a Monday, which was the busiest day of the week, they refused to let him off and told him that if he did not show up to work he would be fired. Christie did not show up on Monday and when he returned from work on Tuesday his job was filled with a new employee.
Christie submitted a complaint under the Individual's Rights Protection Act for dismissal based on religious grounds. The Board of Inquiry ordered that Christie be compensated for lost wages. On appeal the Court held that attendance on Mondays was a bonafide occupational requirement and therefore a valid ground for dismissal.
The issues before the Supreme Court were whether the Dairy farm could justify the dismissal on the basis that the requirement that Christie work on Mondays is a bonafide occupational requirement under section 7(3) of the Act, if not, whether it still open to the respondent to demonstrate that it had accommodated the complainant's religious beliefs up to the point of undue hardship and if so, whether the Dairy farm in fact reasonably accommodate the complainant's religious beliefs.
Read more about this topic: Central Alberta Dairy Pool V. Alberta (Human Rights Commission)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)