Order of Ontario

The Order of Ontario is the most prestigious official honour in the Canadian province of Ontario. Instituted in 1986 by Lieutenant Governor Lincoln Alexander, on the advice of the Cabinet under Premier David Peterson, the civilian order is administered by the Lieutenant Governor-in-Council and is intended to honour current or former Ontario residents for conspicuous achievements in any field.

Structure and appointment

The Order of Ontario is intended to honour any current or former longtime resident of Ontario who has demonstrated a high level of individual excellence and achievement in any field, demonstrating "the best of Ontario's caring and diverse society and [whose] lives have benefited society in Ontario and elsewhere." Canadian citizenship is not a requirement and elected or appointed members of a governmental body are ineligible as long as they hold office. There are no limits on how many can belong to the order or be invested at one time, though the average number of new members stands at 24 per year.

Big O notation

In mathematics, big O notation describes the limiting behavior of a function when the argument tends towards a particular value or infinity, usually in terms of simpler functions. It is a member of a larger family of notations that is called Landau notation, Bachmann–Landau notation (after Edmund Landau and Paul Bachmann), or asymptotic notation. In computer science, big O notation is used to classify algorithms by how they respond (e.g., in their processing time or working space requirements) to changes in input size. In analytic number theory, it is used to estimate the "error committed" while replacing the asymptotic size, or asymptotic mean size, of an arithmetical function, by the value, or mean value, it takes at a large finite argument. A famous example is the problem of estimating the remainder term in the prime number theorem.

Big O notation characterizes functions according to their growth rates: different functions with the same growth rate may be represented using the same O notation.

Ontario

Ontario (ⁱ/ɒnˈtɛərioʊ/) is one of the ten provinces of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province by a large margin, accounting for nearly 40 percent of all Canadians, and is the second largest province in total area. Ontario is fourth largest in total area when the territories of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are included. It is home to the nation's capital city, Ottawa, and the nation's most populous city, Toronto.

Ontario is bordered by the province of Manitoba to the west, Hudson Bay and James Bay to the north, and Quebec to the east, and to the south by the US states of (from west to east) Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. All of Ontario's 2,700 km (1,678 mi) border with the United States follows inland waterways: from the west at Lake of the Woods, eastward along the major rivers and lakes of the Great Lakes/Saint Lawrence River drainage system. These are the Rainy River, the Pigeon River, Lake Superior, the St. Marys River, Lake Huron, the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, the Detroit River, Lake Erie, the Niagara River, Lake Ontario and along the St. Lawrence River from Kingston, Ontario, to the Quebec boundary just east of Cornwall, Ontario.

List of Senators of Canada representing Ontario

This is a list of past and present Senators of Canada representing the province of Ontario. Ontario has had an allocation of 24 senators since the time of Confederation. The province is also one of four regional Senate divisions under Section 26 of the Constitution Act that allows for the expansion of the Senate by one or two senators per region.

Current

Notes:

¹ Senators are appointed to represent Ontario. Each senator may choose to designate a geographic area within Ontario as his or her division.
² Senators are appointed by the Governor-General of Canada in the Queen's name on the recommendation of the prime minister.
³ Division designated as Toronto Centre from 000000001984-01-13-0000January 13, 1984 to 000000002001-02-14-0000February 14, 2001 and Toronto Centre-York from 000000002001-02-15-0000February 15, 2001 to the present.

Historic

Notes:

¹ Senators are appointed to represent Ontario. Each senator may choose to designate a geographic area within Ontario as his or her division.
² Senators are appointed by the Governor-General of Canada in the Queen's name on the recommendation of the prime minister; the initial 24 senators were named by a Royal Proclamation at the time of confederation.

Ontario (Human Rights Commission) v Etobicoke (Borough of)

Ontario (Human Rights Commission) v Etobicoke (Borough of), [1982] 1 S.C.R. 202 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on age discrimination. Several firemen challenged a mandatory retirement policy under the Ontario Human Rights Code. The Court found that the employer did not sufficiently justify the policy as a bona fide occupational requirement.

Background

Harold Hall and Vincent Gray were firemen in the borough of Etobicoke, Ontario. As part of the collective agreement between the borough and the union, all firefighters were required to retire at the age of 60. When Hall and Grey were forced to retire they brought a complaint for age discrimination under section 4(1) of the Ontario Human Rights Code which prohibited discrimination in recruitment or dismissal based on age among other grounds.

The respondents defended their actions by arguing that the rule was a bona fide occupational requirement (BFOR). Namely, that the rule was required to maintain an acceptable standard for firefighting.