A place at the table: Quebec tribunal rules severe allergies comparable to a disability

The day care answered in under two hours.

Accommodation would be impossible, it wrote. The caterer’s menu meant other children’s food in the room, contact could happen even unintentionally, and the centre would rather be transparent than put a child at risk.

Quebec’s Human Rights Tribunal has now ruled that this was discrimination.

In a decision dated 18 August, the tribunal ordered the Montreal day care to pay a family $5,000 for refusing a place to their two-and-a-half-year-old, and declared his allergies comparable to a disability. The list runs to eight: eggs, sesame, nuts, peanuts, almonds, beans, peas and lentils.

The family had written in November 2021, moving from Ottawa to Montreal, and told the centre about the allergies up front. What came back was the two-hour email.

The tribunal did not accept that supervision would have been too difficult. It noted that the centre was running below its licensed capacity at the time: 27 children enrolled against a licence for 41.

This is a Quebec decision under Quebec’s Charter. No Alberta tribunal has been asked the same question, and nothing in this ruling settles how one would answer it.

What travels is the reasoning. A safety concern raised in good faith, and answered honestly and quickly, was not enough on its own. Room the centre was not using counted against it. Any program in any province can read that and ask a fair question of itself: if we declined a child tomorrow, what would our file show we actually tried?

The centre had fourteen empty places.

Source: CP24 – Day care ordered to pay $5,000 after refusing spot for child with severe allergies