Four Rulings in Five Weeks: Ontario Has Quietly Reset the Standard for Workplace Harassment Investigations

Four times in five weeks, an Ontario adjudicator sat down with an employer's workplace investigation file and graded it. Four times, the employer failed the grade. The price ranged from $7,500 to more than $2.6 million — and in one case, the employer failed even though it won the underlying claim.

If you are a CEO or HR leader in Ontario, this is not a string of unlucky employers. It is a pattern: tribunals and courts have converged on the investigation itself as the compliance question. Not whether you reached the right conclusion — whether your process would survive independent scrutiny.

Here is the arc, what changed this month, and what to do about it.

The four rulings

1. The OLRB failed an investigation even though the employer won the case. In Gassi v. The Corporation of the County of Lambton, 2026 CanLII 64081 (ON LRB), a municipal prosecutor dismissed weeks after filing a harassment complaint lost her reprisal claim — the County proved the termination was unconnected to her complaint. But the Board went on to find the County's investigation was not "appropriate in the circumstances" as the Occupational Health and Safety Act requires: the internal investigator interviewed one witness of many, gave the complainant no chance to respond, and offered no reason for stopping there. As Dentons' analysis notes, this is the first OLRB decision to define what "appropriate" actually requires. We covered the ruling — and the Board's new checklist — in depth here.

2. The HRTO priced the investigation that never happened. In Dabbagui v. AV Terrace Bay, 2026 HRTO 784, a probationary engineer complained in writing about racist comments — including being called a "terrorist" — and requested an investigation. Per Fasken's bulletin on the decision, the employer never interviewed him, canvassed no witnesses, produced no report, and relied on the account of a manager implicated in the allegations. When it then terminated him during probation, the unresolved complaints tainted the decision: the tribunal found it more probable than not that race and creed were factors, and awarded $10,000. Probation, the tribunal confirmed, is not a free pass. Our full analysis is here.

3. The HRTO found discrimination inside the investigation itself. In a July decision reported by HR Law Canada, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario found the City of Toronto discriminated against a Black employee in how it investigated her, awarding $7,500 — while dismissing most of her other allegations. The lesson cuts deeper than the number: the investigation is not just a defence exhibit. Conducted badly, it can be the discriminatory act. Our coverage is here.

4. The Superior Court put a seven-figure price on "ammunition gathering." In Silva v. Royal Bank of Canada, 2026 ONSC 3841, the court found a top-ranked financial planner was dismissed for cause on the strength of an investigation that was "more a form of ammunition gathering" — run in part by an investigator four days into her job, who filed a serious-misconduct regulatory report without interviewing the employee or a single affected client. Canadian HR Reporter's account of the judgment captures the court's verdict on the employer's approach: it "went nuclear." Total damages: more than $2.6 million, including $250,000 in punitive damages and $1.9 million for the career the exit paperwork destroyed. Our breakdown is here.

What changed this month

Two of these decisions — Lambton and Silva — are now fully public on CanLII, which means the reasoning is no longer filtered through summaries. And the Lambton reasons deliver something Ontario employers have never had: the OLRB's own hallmarks of an "appropriate" investigation.

The short version of the Board's guidance: the investigation must weigh the rights of complainant and respondent; an internal investigator is acceptable but must actually understand the OHSA, the employer's policies, and investigative procedure; you may scope the investigation — decline to chase every allegation or interview every witness — but you must explain why; parties get a chance to reply to evidence that could materially affect the outcome; the standard is procedural, not outcome-based; and written results are owed to the parties, though not the investigator's full report.

Read the four decisions together and the through-line is unmistakable. Skip the investigation (Dabbagui), run it with bias (Toronto, Silva), or run it thinly and without explanation (Lambton) — different forums, different price points, same finding: the process is the liability.

What to do now

Treat this as an operational checklist, and keep your employment counsel in the loop on any live matter.

1. Audit your last three investigation files against the Lambton hallmarks. Competent investigator, both parties heard, reply opportunity given, scoping decisions explained in writing, written results delivered. Any gap you find is exposure you can still fix — the gap a tribunal finds is not.

2. Kill the one-witness shortcut. You do not have to interview everyone. You do have to document why you stopped where you did. "The investigator didn't think more was necessary" failed at the OLRB, and it will fail for you.

3. Check your investigator's independence and competence before the complaint arrives. Anyone implicated — or reporting to someone implicated — is out. Anyone untrained is a liability. If a complaint touches leadership, that is precisely when "appropriate in the circumstances" tips toward an independent third-party investigation.

4. Never let a termination outrun an open complaint. Dabbagui and Lambton point the same direction from opposite outcomes: unresolved allegations at the moment of dismissal either taint the decision or invite a reprisal fight you win only with documentation. Resolve the complaint properly first, and paper the business rationale independently.

5. Pressure-test before an adjudicator does. Our investigation readiness assessment takes ten minutes and maps your process against the standard these four decisions applied. Our workplace investigation process guide covers the full framework, and ongoing policy and compliance support is available through our HR services practice.

The bottom line

Ontario's adjudicators spent June and July telling employers the same thing at four different price points: your investigation file is the exhibit, and it will be graded on process. The employers who lose are not the ones facing the worst allegations — they are the ones with the weakest files.

If you have a live complaint, an open investigation, or a termination decision resting on one, book a 30-minute call and we will tell you, candidly, whether your process would hold. Or reach out here.

This article reports public decisions for general awareness and is not legal advice. Decisions are summarized from public sources — read the full reasons and consult employment counsel before acting on a specific situation.