In a professional discipline proceeding, the panel found that a social worker committed professional misconduct by refusing counselling services based in part on the complainant's Chinese ethnicity and assumptions about social media use and boundary risks.
Applying the prima facie discrimination framework under the Ontario Human Rights Code, the panel held that the complainant suffered adverse treatment in the provision of services and that the protected ground was a factor in the refusal.
The panel accepted expert evidence on social work boundaries and cultural competence, found that the registrant failed to make adequate inquiries before asserting a boundary conflict, and rejected the registrant's procedural fairness and abuse of process arguments.
Some allegations were dismissed, including those tied to self-determination, referral adequacy, and the intake-form language error, but multiple standards breaches and Code-related misconduct findings were made.
