Since the economic burden of mental disorders in Canada has been estimated at $51-billion per year, with almost $20-billion of that coming from workplace losses, the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) has launched a collaborative project with the Bureau de normalisation du Québec (BNQ) and the standards division of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA Standards) to create a voluntary national standard for mentally healthy workplaces. The standard aims to...
Volunteering: a pleasure or a burden?
After I joined the board of directors at a not-for-profit arts organization, it didn’t take long for me to wonder how I’d balance my new obligations with the rest of my day-to-day life. I’d volunteered before, but only informally. Now I have regular responsibilities, mainly meetings and fundraising. I’ll probably invest 70 to 80 hours volunteering with the organization this year. It’s a worthy cause, but it’s also worthwhile to question the time commitment.
Service animals and people with disabilities – AODA best practices
In Ontario there is a regulation called the Accessibility Standard for Customer Service. One of the requirements of this regulation is that persons with disabilities are allowed to enter your organization’s public premises with a service animal. A person should be able to remain with the animal unless otherwise excluded by law. If the animal is...