In a surprising and troubling decision, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario has ruled against Adam Knauff, a firefighter who made global headlines for filing a legal case after he faced discrimination for being vegan. The case raised a novel issue—whether a vegan belief system counts as a “creed”, a protected ground under the Ontario Human Rights Code. Mr. Knauff plans to appeal the decision by seeking judicial review in the Divisional Court of Ontario.
The Tribunal accepted that creed should include non-religious belief systems, yet still rejected ethical veganism because it “does not address the existence or non-existence of a Creator and/or a higher order of existence”.
What the hell kind of “non-religious belief system” addresses the existence or non-existence of a “Creator”? Are they trying to expand “creed” just enough to cover a particular definition of atheism and absolutely nothing else? The whole point of atheism is that is doesn’t have to address a “Creator” because the laws of nature work just fine without that question being addressed. Sure, some flavors of atheism take a stance on the question, but not all of them do. Are those flavors of atheism suddenly not a “creed”? How could they possibly justify that without applying a biased religious lens (which by its very nature violates basically all atheist “creeds”)?
Edit: I just realized this is exactly like when people who do not understand the first thing about homosexuality ask a male couple which one is the “woman.”
Why does it need to be a creed in order to count as discrimination?
If someone is allergic to peanuts, and they are only offered peanut butter sandwiches as food, they should get sued as well.
How hard would it have been to get the man some beans while he was fighting wildfires? Seriously?
At every school, university or company cafeteria I’ve been to, I’ve seen vegan options. I’ve heard second-hand stories from acquaintances in small companies where they were the only vegan, and there was still some accommodation.
How ass-backwards do they have to be to deny even that?
For the record… probably pretty hard. Depending on the camp, they might have had to be flown in.
If it wasn’t an issue brought up before deployment, they might not have anything on hand that isn’t planned for future meals.
I don’t know if it was, and logistically speaking, if it was it probably would have been prudent to leave him behind as a “reasonable accommodation”, though I do know there’s plenty of freeze dried rations that are vegan/vegetarian, if that’s what the rest of the crew were eating, then it wouldn’t be too hard (if they knew before hand.)
They would have bent over backwards for him if he was Jewish or Muslim. Belief in fairy tales required.
Yup, his beliefs should be respected as well.
What is it with firefighters and meat? When I was a member of a small voluntary firefighters brigade, they were really fixated on having meat in the food we got. Needless to say that there were almost no women serving.
It is kinda weird that the people most likely to know what burning human flesh smells like are in any way still interested in meat.
Smells like lamb/mutton, Source - The Ganges river.
When I was in medical school, I had my lab scheduled before lunch time. Which meant that I went straight from dissecting people, to eating. I’d get a big salad, and asked the cafeteria workers to heat up the slices of chicken breast I’d get on the salad. They didn’t like that I asked for it heated up, because it was extra work for them. But after they told me they wouldn’t do it anymore, I said “man, I was just dissecting a person, and this chicken is just way too similar looking to human for me to eat cold, ya feel me?” They ended up heating my chicken.
Man you got on a LOT of watch lists with that comment lmao
It’s all the smells they encounter on the job! Gets them super hungry!
I’m down to discriminate on religious people equally in these situations. I think Muslims should be required to eat bacon to get their residency.
The Tribunal accepted that creed should include non-religious belief systems, yet still rejected ethical veganism because it “does not address the existence or non-existence of a Creator and/or a higher order of existence”.
It’s kind of funny that there is the implicit idea that any wacky ideas counts as a creed as long as it has fake answers for irrelevant questions. It’s ballsy for the Tribunal would shit on religion like that.
