By: Matthew Benoit*
The Supreme Court of Canada has held that “When sexual harassment occurs in the workplace, it is an abuse of both economic and sexual power. Sexual harassment is a demeaning practice, one that constitutes a profound affront to the dignity of the employees forced to endure it. By requiring an employee to contend with unwelcome sexual actions or explicit sexual demands, sexual harassment in the workplace attacks the dignity and self-respect of the victim both as an employee and as a human being.”

The restaurant industry is one of the largest employment fields: “In Ontario, restaurants employ 440,000 people, or 6.4% of the workforce, and more than one in five Canadians between the ages of 15 and 24 work in the industry.” Additionally, for frontline workers such as bartenders, hosts, and wait staff, women under 24 compose one-third of workers. As such, the environment that restaurants foster can have a widespread impact on the workforce, particularly on workers under 24.
Restaurants are one of the types of workplaces most replete with sexual harassment. Restaurant work “is organized in a way that constrains worker resistance to unwanted sexual attention and sexual harassment, shaping an environment in which, over time, sexual conduct can come to be thought of by women workers as a “normal” and sometimes an accepted feature of the work.” Adding to this is the worker-client dynamic. Customers often harass restaurant workers; in forms of employment that involve the practice of tipping, a worker may be more reticent to confront a situation where a customer is harassing them.
A worker may bring a sexual harassment claim to the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) against their workplace. While an employer is not responsible for the immediate conduct of a customer, an employer’s failure or refusal to adequately address sexual harassment workers experience from customers contributes to maintaining a toxic, discriminatory environment. An example of this is the case of Ankamah v. Chauhan Food Services, 2010 HRTO 2024 (CanLII); the HRTO found the owner of a Tim Horton’s franchise liable for not having taken steps to protect their employee from sexual harassment they experienced from a regular customer. In making their finding of liability, the HRTO noted that “ In summary, the organizational respondent is liable to the extent that the applicant’s store manager failed to respond promptly and sensitively to the applicant’s disclosure of the incidents, thus leaving the applicant to believe for several days that her employer was not prepared to create a healthy, safe and discrimination-free environment for her.”
So, the question is: how can restaurants proactively prevent sexual harassment and address it when it does occur? My suggestions are:
1. Employers develop and enforce a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment among workers and customers. Worker complaints about sexual harassment from any party should be fulsomely investigated and be cause for termination or denial of service.
2. Promote an environment encouraging workers to disclose incidents of sexual harassment.
3. Workers should be educated about their rights and what constitutes sexual harassment.
Janzen v. Platy Enterprises Ltd., [1989] 1 S.C.R. 1252, 59 DLR (4th) 352 at p. 1284
Kaitlyn Matulewicz “Law and the Construction of Institutionalized Sexual Harassment in Restaurants” (2015) 30:3 Canadian Journal of Law and Society / Revue Canadienne Droit et Société at p. 403
3. Ankamah v. Chauhan Food Services, 2010 HRTO 2024 (CanLII) at para. 45.
*Matthew Benoit grew up in St. Thomas, Ontario. He received his law degree at the University of Toronto after receiving an HBA and an MA in English at Wilfrid Laurier University and Lakehead University, respectively. He was awarded Lakehead University President’s Award for his academic accomplishment, community service, and contribution to the welfare of the university. His areas of academic interest are comics, Indigenous literature, literary theory, ludonarratives, Medieval and Early Modern literature, and science fiction. His areas of legal interest are administrative, constitutional, and criminal law. He is currently articling at the Northumberland Community Legal Centre and previously summered at the Middlesex County Crown Attorney’s Office. He enjoys academic writing, hiking, gaming, fencing, tennis, and weightlifting.
Disclaimer: This post contains general legal information as of January 13, 2025, that may or may not apply in a particular situation. It is important to note that the law, government policies and available programs can change, and this blog will not be updated to reflect these changes. It is highly recommended to seek legal advice from a lawyer about your particular situation.
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