Danielle is a partner with Cavalluzzo LLP practising in the areas of workers’ and Indigenous rights, equality, health and Aboriginal law. She represents unions and associations, regulated professionals including nurses and midwives, and First Nations in diverse contexts including labour disputes, government relations, human rights and constitutional law, health equity, pay equity, professional regulation, judicial reviews and appeals. She has particular expertise in the health care, policing and public sectors.
She has extensive experience litigating complex systemic discrimination claims including leading equality cases on behalf of women, racialized and disabled workers. She has twice represented the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) as an intervener in appeals relating to workplace gender discrimination, first in Canada v. Johnstone, a leading case on family status discrimination, and second in Fraser v. Canada, a Supreme Court of Canada case on adverse effect discrimination and pension equality for women with caregiving responsibilities.
Danielle is regularly invited to present to academic and professional audiences in the areas of labour, administrative, equality and health law and advocacy, as well as diversity in the legal profession. She holds a JD from Osgoode Hall Law School, where she received several academic awards including the Hallett Entrance Scholarship, which she maintained throughout law school. Prior to law, Danielle earned graduate degrees in Social and Political Thought and English Literature.
Danielle brings feminist, anti-racist and decolonial approaches to her legal practice and is committed to using law to empower clients and support the aims of labour and social movements. Her commitment to law as a tool for achieving justice at work flows from her experiences as a union member and community organizer with Filipinx migrant workers and their families.
In her non-lawyering life, Danielle is a mother and student of two chaotic beings who do not quit and a Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of Parkdale Community Legal Services.
Areas of expertise
- Equality law, including human rights, Charter, and pay equity
- Constitutional law, including freedom of association
- Health law, policy, and government relations
- Aboriginal law, with a focus on health equity
- Election law
- Union governance
Representative cases and mandates
- Regularly represent health professionals in discipline and other proceedings before their regulators
- Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association v Ontario (successful Charter challenge to Ontario’s Bill 124 compensation restraint legislation)
- Ontario Nurses’ Association v Participating Nursing Homes (leading case on proxy method of maintaining pay equity for workers in predominantly female workplaces)
- Negotiated historic Framework Agreement on behalf of Grassy Narrows First Nation with federal government to address health equity and services for community impacted by mercury poisoning
- Schuyler Farms Ltd. v. Dr. Nesathurai (intervention on behalf of Canadian Lawyers for International Human Rights in farm’s appeal of order of Medical Officer of Health to limit number of migrant farmworkers residing in communal bunkhouses to mitigate risk of COVID-19 infection)
- Fraser v Canada (intervention on behalf of LEAF in gender equality claim by female RCMP officers denied equal access to pension contributions during periods of job-sharing due to childcare obligations)
- Ontario Nurses’ Association v Eatonville/Henley Place (in context of COVID-19 pandemic, injunction on behalf of nurses employed in long-term care facilities requiring employers to provide access to N95 respirators and improved infection control and occupational health and safety measures)
- Civilian Association of Managers and Specialists v Ontario Provincial Police (represented association of civilian employees in settling claim of systemic gender discrimination in compensation)
- ONA v Cambridge Memorial Hospital (judicial review of arbitration decision confirming that discipline of employees for misconduct linked with substance dependence must conform with human rights principles)
- ONA v Toronto East General Hospital (appeal restoring labour arbitrator’s award interpreting collective agreement language on part-time employees and layoffs)
- Fenton v Toronto Police Service (represented public complainants and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association in police discipline proceeding against commanding officer responsible for largest mass arrest in Canadian history during the 2010 G20 Summit in Toronto)
- Canada (Attorney General) v. Johnstone (intervention on behalf of LEAF in a leading case on legal test for employer’s human rights obligations to accommodate employees on the ground of family status)
- College of Nurses of Ontario v. XX (represented nurse in constitutional and human rights challenge to statutory regime regulating nurses diagnosed with mental illness and substance dependence)
- McKinnon v. Ontario (Correctional Services) (order from the HRTO for a stated case of contempt by a Deputy Minister in context of leading human rights tribunal case on race discrimination and systemic remedies)
Selected Publications and Presentations
- Law Society of Ontario
- Repeated presenter on labour and administrative law issues
- The Advocates’ Society
- Repeated presenter on administrative law and equality in the legal profession
- Osgoode Professional Development, York University
- Instructor, Certificate in Human Rights Theory and Practice
- Instructor, Campus Sexual Harassment Certificate
- Instructor, Legal Risk Management for Nurses
- Lancaster House
- Panelist and Advisory Board Member for numerous labour and human rights conferences and workshops
- Canadian Association of Labour Lawyers
- Repeated panelist and moderator on range of topics including sexual harassment, freedom of association and injunction
- Bisnar, Danielle & Dosanjh, Balraj. “Reasonableness Redux: Vavilov and Continuing Ambiguities in Judicial Review of Labour Law”, Canadian Journal of Administrative Law & Practice, 33:2, June 2020
- Bisnar, Danielle & O'Brien, Shaun. "Regulating Disability and the Public Interest: A Case Study on the Human Rights of Regulated Professionals", Canadian Journal of Administrative Law & Practice, 31:1, March 2018
- Bisnar, Danielle & McIntyre, Elizabeth. “Lessons for Litigators from ONA v. Chatham-Kent: A Union Perspective”, (2013) 17 Canadian Labour & Employment Law Journal 225
