Harassment & Discrimination Prevention and Response

Discrimination

Discrimination occurs when a person or group is treated unfairly, excluded, denied opportunities, or subjected to adverse treatment because of a protected characteristic. Discrimination may be direct, indirect, personal, or systemic.

Protected characteristics

Protected grounds may include, but are not limited to:

• race, ancestry, place of origin, or ethnic background
• Indigenous identity
• religion or belief
• sex, gender identity, or gender expression
• sexual orientation
• age
• marital or family status
• physical or mental disability
• other grounds protected by applicable law

Examples

• A transgender employee is not given work tasks solely because of their manager's feelings about the 2SLGBTQPIA+ community.
• A racialized employee receives more scrutiny and disciplinary action than non-racialized colleagues for similar workplace mistakes.
• A student experiences negative treatment and comments from a faculty member due to a request for approved accommodations.

Systemic discrimination

Systemic discrimination can result from policies or practices that create barriers or unequal outcomes for groups based on protected characteristics.

• It may be embedded in organizational structures and result in patterns of disadvantage that affect groups rather than specific individuals.
• It may be unintentional.
• Policies or practices may appear neutral while producing unequal outcomes.

Examples

• Policies that support parental or medical leave but deny access to advancement opportunities.
• Team-building activities or informal work activities that are inaccessible, after hours, or culturally exclusionary.
• Course content and curriculum that do not reflect Indigenous or diverse worldviews.

Harassment

Harassment is unwelcome conduct, comment, or action that a reasonable person knows, or ought to know, is unwelcome, and that humiliates, intimidates, degrades or creates a hostile environment for another person.

Harassment may occur in person or online, including cyberbullying. Discriminatory harassment is harassment related to protected grounds as defined in the BC Human Rights Code.

Bullying

Bullying is repeated behaviour that a reasonable person would view as intimidating, humiliating, undermining, or harmful. It may not be connected to a protected characteristic.

Examples

• A supervisor repeatedly belittles an employee's ideas during meetings.
• A student calls another student a derogatory name.
• Coworkers deliberately exclude a coworker from meetings, communications and social activities.

Sexual harassment

Sexual harassment includes unwelcome behaviour of a sexual nature that interferes with a person's participation, safety, or dignity. It may be verbal, written, visual, digital, or physical.

Examples

• Distributing an email to colleagues containing a sexual joke.
• Unwelcome advances or requests for sexual attention.

Retaliation

Retaliation is any negative action taken against a person because they made a complaint, supported someone else in making a complaint, or participated in a review or investigation.

TRU will not tolerate acts of retaliation as outlined in Policy BRD 17-0.

Examples

• A manager begins excessive scrutiny or micromanagement of an employee after a complaint.
• A student who participates in an investigation is targeted and excluded from research opportunities.