On May 2, 2014, the Federal Court of Appeal confirmed that employers have a legal obligation to accommodate their employees' “childcare obligations” as a component of their duty to accommodate an employee’s “family status.”
In its decisions in the parallel cases of Canada (Attorney General) v. Johnstone, 2014 FCA 110 (CanLII) and Canadian National Railway v. Denise Seeley and Canadian Human Rights Commission the Federal Court of Appeal confirmed that the definition of “family status” in the Canadian Human Rights Act includes “parental obligations.”