P.A. Neena Gupta

About P.A. Neena Gupta

P.A. Neena Gupta is a partner in Gowling WLG's Employment, Labour & Equalities Group, working from the Waterloo Region and Toronto offices and acting for employers on employment and human rights law. Those clients run from start-ups to large multinationals. On the planning side, Gupta drafts and reviews offer letters, contracts, workplace policies and pay plans, deals with staff who work across the border, and keeps organizations in line with Canadian rules. When a dispute does land, the same partner handles the litigation and makes a point of keeping it practical, focused and cost-conscious.

The day-to-day work spans Ontario's Human Rights Code and Employment Standards Act, 2001, the Canada Labour Code, the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Pay Equity Act and the AODA, both for compliance and in litigation. Gupta has defended multinational clients against claims of systemic discrimination and taken a national retailer through a long run of wrongful and constructive dismissal cases. Employers also call for guidance on running a proper workplace investigation, and private equity and venture capital investors have brought Gupta in on the employment side of their deals.

Gupta was called in Saskatchewan in 1988 and in Ontario the following year. Gupta has also taught, creating Seneca College's employment law course and serving as an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto and Queen's law faculties. Gupta also wrote a 2004 Butterworths guide on running sexual harassment investigations. These days Gupta co-chairs the Law Society of Ontario's yearly Employment Law Summit, and in 2022 sat on an HRPA conference panel looking back over 30 years of HR law.

Outside the office, Gupta chairs the board of United Way of Waterloo Region Communities, gave five years as a governor of the Law Commission of Ontario, and spent more than ten years on the Ontario Superior Court's Rules Committee. Equity in the profession is a long-running thread: Gupta helped found the Ontario Bar Association's Visible Minority Women's Subcommittee, chaired the Canadian Bar Association's Equity Committee, and in 2014 helped set up Gowling WLG's national diversity and inclusion council. In 2018 the Waterloo Region Law Association gave Gupta its first FEMPOWR award, recognizing mentorship of women in practice.