Other Serious Legal Issues

To ensure that participants were able to reflect on all possible kinds of serious legal issues, we asked them, “Are there any other areas in which you have encountered a serious dispute or problem?” All the participants experiencing such issues were from Eastern Canada, three of 17 (17 percent) total participants. No participants from Central Canada experienced any issues that fell outside the interview questionnaire’s predetermined legal area categories. The areas that the Eastern Canada participants shared included a variety of experiences that incorporated mental health difficulties, interpersonal violence, sex work, and Indigenous identity.

The following participant experienced discrimination because their mental health difficulties and sexual orientation intersected. As a result of the anxiety they were experiencing, the participant asked for a leave of absence from work. Doing so amounted to coming out to their employer because they had to explain some of the mental health issues they were experiencing, and they were concerned about their employer’s reaction. They had seen another colleague experience discrimination when they had come out as LGBTQ. As the participant puts it, “given that my employer has so little experience with LGBTQ people, given this one negative experience with this colleague of mine, I was concerned about being discriminated against” (EC#10).

The following participant believed he faced discrimination because of an incident involving interpersonal violence. The participant and another person had been binge drinking over a number of days and their behaviour escalated to the point of breaking an office window. A bystander had watched this happen and took it upon themselves to hold the participant down against their will until the police arrived. The participant elaborated on the aftermath of the incident, and the resultant concerns they had about the justice system’s process. The participant was given a year of probation and had to turn to sex work to pay for the damages, noting, “I had done sex work in [the] past but it was like re-traumatizing myself. For something I had fucked up, but I don’t know. The system is super broken (EC#13).

Finally, the following participant believed that they experienced discrimination because of their Indigenous identity, specifically in wanting to access an Indigenous centre and resources specific to their culture (Oneida), but did not have access to culturally-specific resources in the province where they were living at the time. They accessed [type of] centres in Nova Scotia, but identify as Oneida (within Ontario), and therefore felt they were missing out on their particular culture. They also noted a lack of resources for Indigenous people in general, suggesting that every time they try to find resources, it is difficult, or they are continually referred back to the Mi’kmaq centre. They stressed their concerns about resources for Indigenous people on the East Coast and acknowledge that there is no one from their Oneida culture to help them explore their Indigenous identity.

They continued to describe an interaction with the police, who were called because their partner was behaving badly. The participant became concerned because the responding officer was aggressive and made them feel uncomfortable in that “he was just extremely aggressive in his mannerism and he was trying to call my partner over the phone and saying things like, if I ever find you I’m going to kill you” (EC#14). The participant noted that the police officer should have been there to help, but instead their behaviour became worrying. Ultimately no charges were laid against their partner.