Dismissing an employee with a mental illness without first trying to accommodate the worker amounts to discrimination, said a spokesman for the Ontario Human Rights Commission after it ruled against an Ottawa company that fired a man with bipolar disorder.

"It is time for our society to recognize that mental illnesses are illnesses. They are not worse than other illnesses in terms of their consequences in the work environment," François Larsen, director of the policy and education branch of the commission, told CBC's French-language service Wednesday in French. "There are obligations to accommodate people when they are sick."

He was commenting on the significance of a recent Ontario human rights tribunal decision against ADGA Group Consultants Inc. to pay Paul Lane $80,000 after ruling in October that the company had discriminated against Lane on the basis of a disability.

The company has said it will appeal the decision.

According to the facts presented in the ruling, Lane was dismissed in October 2001, eight days after he started work as a senior test analyst as ADGA. He had told his supervisor that he had bipolar disorder and his behaviour should be monitored.

"As a consequence of his dismissal," Lane was hospitalized almost immediately, the ruling found.

The company denied that it discriminated against Lane on the basis of his disability. It alleged he was dismissed because he was not capable of performing the essential functions of the job for which he had been hired. It also said he had lied about the amount of sick time he had taken during a previous job that would have alerted the company to his illness.

However, tribunal adjudicator David J. Mullan found the company did not, as required, make a significant effort to accommodate Lane or properly assess the situation to determine whether it could accommodate Lane's disability without "undue hardship."