In conversation with Adam Knauff, Wade Poziomka, and Camille Labchuk
Adam Knauff is an ethical vegan and a firefighter who has been employed with Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources for over a decade. In July 2017, Adam was deployed to Williams Lake, British Columbia. Meals at the base camp were provided by a company contracted by the Ministry. He relied on vegan meals from the Ministry, and they had been aware since 2008 of his commitment to ethical veganism, but on this deployment, Adam experienced “a chronic lack of any sort of vegan food.” Adam tried to remedy the situation through everyone that he could talk to in the chain of command, but “it kept getting worse and worse.”
After working long hours for four days without adequate nutrition, Adam felt exhausted, but he continued serving in the wildfire efforts. Despite his numerous attempts to request adequately nutritious meals, and even though other dietary restrictions were being accommodated, the problem persisted for Adam. Finally, when he witnessed cross-contamination of the food that was being prepared for him, he lost his temper and swore. The next morning, he was sent home and punished with an unpaid suspension, which is on his permanent record as of now.
Adam filed a Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario application against the Ministry of Natural Resources for failing to accommodate his ethical veganism and reprising against him when he asserted his rights to accommodation on the basis of his sincerely held ethical belief. The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario resolves claims raised under the Human Rights Code. It prohibits discrimination and harassment within five social areas (including employment) on the basis of seventeen enumerated grounds. These grounds include race, sex, age, family status, and creed. The Code also prohibits, among other things, reprisal or threats of reprisal when someone asserts their rights.
I had the opportunity to interview Adam, his lawyer Wade Poziomka, and Executive Director of Animal Justice, Camille Labchuk, about the significance of this case for Canadian law.
Creed Protections in Ontario
The Ontario Human Rights Commission views the following features as relevant when considering whether a belief system is a creed under the Code: a “sincerely, freely and deeply held … system of belief” that is “integrally linked to a person’s identity” which “addresses ultimate questions … about life, purpose, death” and has some “connection to an organization or community that professes a shared system of belief.” Although Canadian courts and tribunals have tended to conceive of creed as related to religious beliefs and practices, the revised 2015 OHRC policy is clear that creed “may also include non-religious belief systems that, like religion, substantially influence a person’s identity, worldview and way of life.”
Labchuk first encountered issues regarding ethical veganism and creed in the summer of 2011, when she was a law student with Animal Justice. She explained, “at that point, we became aware that the Ontario Human Rights Commission was considering revising its definition of creed, which had last been updated over fifteen years prior. The Commission was looking at reconsidering how people’s beliefs should be protected in Ontario and issued a new policy position.”
“I started learning more about the arguments in favour of recognizing ethical veganism as a creed,” she continued. “The previous policy statement from the Commission recognized only religious bases for creed, and creed was seen at that point as being basically synonymous with religion. To its credit, the Commission is aware of the evolving societal nature of what constitutes a creed and how belief systems are important to people. So, I got involved by submitting a paper and doing a presentation before the Commission. When they eventually put forward a new policy, we were delighted to see that everything that we had argued for in that paper was adopted: [the Commission] said that secular beliefs can count as a form of creed.”
A year later, Animal Justice sought to intervene in Ketenci v Ryerson University at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO). In that case, Sinem Ketenci, a then-graduate student at Ryerson, filed an application with the Tribunal claiming discrimination on the basis of creed as an ethical vegan.
Labchuk explained, “at issue was, first of all, whether she had faced discrimination and, second of all, whether that discrimination was due to her stance as an ethical vegan. What ended up happening is the Tribunal decided the case on the basis of the first question only. The Tribunal found that there had been no discrimination that could be proven in the case, so they didn’t need to decide the question of ethical veganism. It’s been an open question since that time (since always) about whether these belief systems do count.”
Ethical Veganism in Other Jurisdictions
Canada is not the only country in which legal issues concerning ethical veganism as creed have been raised. In Hashman v Milton Park, a 2011 British Employment Tribunal case, the tribunal ruled in favour of Joe Hashman, a sub-contract gardener who had been terminated from employment as a direct result of his belief in anti-fox hunting activism, which conflicted with his employer’s. Hashman, an ethical vegan, was committed to preventing cruelty to animals. The Tribunal recognized his deeply-held belief that “people should live their lives with mindful respect for animals and [that] we all have a moral obligation to live in a way which is kind to each other, our environment and our fellow creatures.”
Earlier this year, in the case of Casamitjana v The League Against Cruel Sports, the English Employment Tribunal found that ethical veganism qualifies as a protected belief for the purposes of the UK Equality Act. The significance of this ruling, Poziomka said, is that it “demonstrates to the HRTO that ethical veganism as a creed is not necessarily something novel. Ontario is not being asked to lead the way in respect of this issue – we’re simply asking the Tribunal to apply the facts of Adam’s particular case and his particular belief-system to the already-accepted creed standard in Ontario. This case shows it is already happening elsewhere.”
Labchuk echoed, “It’s always a good sign when a court is considering doing something, especially on a rights issue, to look at the way rights law is evolving around the world. It wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone working in this area of law that the English Tribunal did rule the way it did. For some time, there’s been a series of favourable rulings that have directly touched on the issue of ethical veganism.”
Labchuk added that there have also been a series of successful cases in Germany. Lawyers have argued that vegans deserve protections for their beliefs in the provision of food on airlines, for example, and that parents of vegan school students ought not be required to pay into a school lunch program that their children can’t benefit from because there aren’t any vegan options.
“The law has been evolving in the UK and certainly in other jurisdictions that share a lot in common with Canada. It’s encouraging to see that it’s not just our country that’s dealing with these issues. It’s a new global phenomenon where people are expressing these concerns about animals and deserve protections for their beliefs,” she said.
Across the world, rates of veganism and vegetarianism are surging. Researchers at Dalhousie University reported in 2018 that 9.4 per cent of Canadians consider themselves vegetarian or vegan. “The progress we’re seeing in Canada and the UK is reflective of many other jurisdictions,” Labchuk said.
The Law in Canada
“In Ontario, ethical veganism has yet to be found to constitute creed,” Poziomka noted. “There are not a lot of cases where the issue of ethical veganism has been put forward in Canada. This case is not something novel – we are not asking the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario to decide something that will radically alter the law. We already know that creed can be something other than a religious view. The test for what constitutes a creed is well-established.”
“What we have to look at in these cases – ethical veganism being one of them – is whether Adam’s specific beliefs and the reasons why he’s an ethical vegan fit into the criteria for establishing a creed,” he continued. “It really is as simple as that, it is not something novel or ground-breaking. Veganism can be a creed and can also not be a creed, it depends on why someone is a vegan. For the most part, ethical veganism would constitute a creed, and in Adam’s case, based on the reasons he is an ethical vegan, I think it does. I want to be clear that I don’t think that veganism is always protected under the ground of creed.”
Poziomka said, “this case is going to turn on [Adam’s] belief system, so it’s going to be very specific to Adam. I think if the Tribunal ultimately finds that ethical veganism can be protected under the ground of creed, that will open the door for others, but it won’t be a blanket finding that says veganism is a creed. The challenge will be to show the Tribunal where Adam’s belief system stems from and that it’s very particular to him, and it fits the criteria of what a creed is.”
“Also, for those who are worried about opening the floodgates, this will not happen as a result of Adam’s case. Too often, when the law advances, the counter-argument is the floodgates concern and often, after those advances have happened, it simply isn’t the case. The floodgates argument is often advanced to counter progress in the area of human rights when there are few or no actually legitimate reasons not to advance an area of human rights law,” Poziomka concluded.
In speaking with Adam, it was clear to me that he is passionate about and deeply committed to preventing cruelty to animals, and that he has profoundly reflected on these ethical issues. Adam became vegetarian at age thirteen, when he made the connection that killing animals and eating them was wrong. At eighteen, he learned about the dairy industry and other animal industries and felt that “the whole thing was just wrong, and we shouldn’t do it.” He explained, “I knew that I had the ability and choice to not do it. That’s how I became a vegan.”
Adam recounted in detail how ethical veganism informs and affects his daily life. “Because I believe so strongly that we shouldn’t use or abuse, kill, or eat, any animals on the planet, I always think: is this part of the [animal] industry? Is this something I want to be a part of?”
For Adam, his beliefs apply to every practice in his daily life, not just meals. “It’s about how the animals are treated,” he emphasized. “I’m not going to go on a horse-and-carriage ride in a park somewhere. If I go diving, I don’t want people on the boat to be fishing. When I do choose to eat at restaurants, I would prefer to eat at a place that is completely vegan because they understand and also don’t want to be a part of the industry. It’s so part of my day-to-day, it’s almost beyond religion. I don’t just go once a week or even 3-5 times a day to participate in [ethical veganism] – it’s literally all day every day. Choosing how to support changing the world for the better goes way beyond my personal choices. It’s about speaking for the billions of animals who can’t speak.”
Adam reflected on how he’s not able to hold certain people he’s known for many years as dear and close friends anymore because they’re “not nearly on the same wavelength about how to treat animals and make daily choices to be as unharmful as possible”.
Although his belief system proved isolating at times for Adam, the advent of social media has made connecting with like-minded individuals who share his ethical belief systems much easier. Adam explained that he feels connected to other ethical vegans (some of whom he connects with on social media platforms like Instagram) who, like him, are principally committed to anti-oppression of animals. He expresses solidarity with animal rights protests and marches, and he is an active contributor to Happy Cow, a website and app that promotes vegetarian and vegan restaurants, hotels, stores, and other business outlets throughout the world. Despite not having a place of worship (as one might if associated with an organized religion), Adam commented, he does feel a shared connection with other ethical vegans, citing their fundamental belief systems as a unifying thread.
Labchuk explained that Animal Justice will be seeking intervenor status in Adam’s case. “The reason that we feel that the intervention is important is that we want to make sure the Tribunal is aware of the social context right now around the growth of ethical veganism. The reasons why so many people are choosing to adopt an ethical vegan lifestyle … tend to be primarily for the ethics of eating animals. They don’t believe it’s right to do so, they don’t want to cause animals to suffer, so they try to avoid so far as possible or practical all forms of animal products in their diet and avoid causing harm to animals in other ways, too.”
Labchuk continued: “people are increasingly turning to secular belief systems to ground their conceptions of right and wrong. Whereas religion was often a basis in previous years (or were more prominent reasons in recent years) for making moral choices, those choices are often now made for secular reasons and include secular beliefs systems, like ethical veganism.”
“We want to make sure that the Tribunal is aware of that context and is aware of the importance of that belief for an ethical vegan. What we are requesting is the ability to present evidence. We want to show the Tribunal sociological evidence about vegans, the importance of veganism to them, and about the growth of this belief system in Canada and other locations. We want to be able to put all that information before the Tribunal, so it understands very well the social context and the importance of getting the case right, not just for ethical vegans but also [for] providing guidance to employers who need some firm case law to know what to do to accommodate people who have an ethical vegan belief system,” she concluded.
Adam’s matter proceeded to mediation on March 3, 2020. A hearing date has not yet been scheduled.