“Nice to see your work stolen without even any mention of the people that put it together.” A US-City Deputy Chief wrote this sentence in a one to one email to its former Chief, referring to the new Chief’s presentation. Is it disparaging?

If it were in an Ontario workplace the answer depends on how you apply policy definitions, legal thresholds, and a reasonableness test that weighs both intent and impact.

1) Why definitions matter (Ontario OHS & Human Rights lenses)

Under Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA), workplace harassment is defined as “a course of vexatious comment or conduct… that is known or ought reasonably to be known to be unwelcome,” and it explicitly includes virtual communications. While repeated conduct is typical, a single incident may be enough in certain scenarios, and the Ministry of Labour's guidance emphasizes a continuum from offensive remarks to violence, passing through harassment. Employers must maintain harassment policies/programs and investigate incidents proportionately.

Ontario’s Human Rights Code (HRC) uses nearly identical wording for harassment and, in tribunal policy and case law, frames it as a subjective–objective test: what the respondent actually knew and what a reasonable person ought to have known, considering the recekpien’s perspective. When conduct relates to protected grounds (e.g., race, sex, disability), duties and remedies escalate through human rights processes.

While both the OHSA and the Human Rights Code use the phrase “known or ought reasonably to be known to be unwelcome,” the Human Rights framework focuses on the behaviour’s impact, whilst the OHSA incorporates the same dual lens but tends to focus on workplace health and safety and procedural duties.

And most public sector Codes of Conduct also prohibit disrespect, belittling, and incivility, even where conduct doesn’t meet harassment thresholds under OHSA or engages protected grounds under the HRC. Leaders are expected to prevent and address incivility early to prevent the continuum to keep moving towards harassment.

2) The Mitigation Reasonableness Test

The core question for this context and the comment listed is: Would a reasonable person, familiar with the relationship and context, interpret the comment as venting or shorthand (disrespectful) rather than a serious accusation (disparaging)?

This blends the objective (“reasonable person”) and subjective (relationship, intended tone) elements used in Ontario harassment analysis. And when we break it down further, we could consider:

• Objective factors such as the means used to deliver the message and level of privacy, language severity, and a pattern vs. an isolated incident; and  
• Subjective/contextual factors that may include the relationship history, idiomatic shorthand, and the organization's transition emotions.

3) Two pathways: finding it disparaging vs. not disparaging

A) Reasons to find it disparaging

• Firstly, the accusatory content and contemptuous tone using “Stolen” questions integrity; sarcasm, “Nice to see…”, amplifies contempt, which is a conduct that is often captured as disrespect/incivility under Codes of Conduct.
• Secondly, a reasonable leader (Deputy Chief) should foresee that suggesting that a colleague (even indirectly) is “stealing” work would be unwelcome and demeaning; this may satisfy the objective component to find a breach of policy/law even if the OHSA “course of” element is not met.
• Finally, regardless of labels, disparaging or not, organizations must assess and, where appropriate, investigate because incivility sits on the same continuum that a policy aims to address, prevention of harassment, then violence.

So, a reasonable person would likely view this sentence as a disparaging shot at the New Chief’s integrity, contrary to respectful workplace standards, even if it may not meet OHSA’s harassment threshold as a single incident.

B) Reasons to not find it disparaging (or to mitigate severity)

• Now, if we find that the sentence was an idiomatic shorthand within rapport between two individuals, and a known relational context, “stolen” could be hyperbole for “used without attribution,” supporting a venting interpretation.
• Adding that the venue was a private and limited audience without a call to action reduces impact and suggests no organizational campaign to undermine the new chief.
• And assuming that it was an isolated comment, and there is no pattern of behaviour, no repetition, targeting, or protected ground content, may also reduce the impact of the sentence used.

So, given the relationship, private context and lack of repetition, the statement can reasonably be treated as ill phrased venting about attribution, inappropriate but mitigated.

4) Takeaway

The core compliance question isn’t whether the comment can be labeled “disparaging” or not. It’s whether the behavior, disparaging or otherwise, violates an internal policy/Code of Conduct or crosses a legal threshold for harassment, discrimination, or violence. Once that determination is made, the next step is deciding the proportionate response, which may go from any version of discipline, up to and including termination, if understood as harassment, or any version of coaching if understood as disrespectful.