About Christine Thomlinson
Christine Thomlinson is the President of RT Workplace Training & Consulting Inc. (“RTW”). After more than 30 years conducting workplace and institutional investigations, Christine now focuses primarily on the work she finds most meaningful: training and consulting.
Christine co-founded Rubin Thomlinson LLP and helped build it into Canada’s foremost firm devoted exclusively to workplace and institutional investigations. After 23 years, the firm concluded operations on April 30, 2026. The training and consulting work continues through RTW.
Expertise and Approach
For 15 years, RTW has built the capacity Canadian organizations need to handle harassment, discrimination, and misconduct allegations with rigour and care. Christine leads the development of the curriculum, ensuring it remains practical, nuanced, and grounded in real-world investigation experience. Alongside the training, Christine consults with organizations on the systems, policies, and processes that foster cultures of respect.
The volume, complexity, and stakes of workplace complaints are growing faster than ever. Investigations are a critical part of how organizations address misconduct that runs counter to their values — when done right, participants trust the systems meant to protect them; when done wrong, those systems fall apart. Beyond training, Christine consults with organizations facing complex workplace concerns, drawing on three decades of investigation experience to help them strengthen the systems, policies, and processes that prevent harm before it occurs. Organizations that invest in both their internal capacity and their structural integrity make better decisions, build healthier workplaces, and are better positioned when their processes are scrutinized.
Recognition and Publications
In March 2026, Christine received the Ontario Bar Association’s Randall Echlin Award for Excellence in Labour and Employment Law, an honour she will cherish most of all because it is named after her friend and co-author. She has been recognized in Best Lawyers in Canada since 2010, listed in Lexpert’s Leading 500, and ranked by Chambers. In 2016, she received the Lexpert Zenith Award for contributions to diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.
Christine is the co-author of Human Resources Guide to Workplace Investigations, now in its second edition and a foundational text for HR professionals and investigators across the country. Earlier in her career, she co-authored For Better or For Worse: A Practical Guide to Canadian Employment Law with the late Mr. Justice Randall Scott Echlin.
Christine funds the Christine Thomlinson Entrance Scholarship in Equity and Human Rights at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, her alma mater, because the cost of law school should not stand between a committed student and the work of equity and human rights.
Background
- Called to the Bar of Ontario
- LL.B., University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law (Common Law Section)
- Bachelor of Administrative and Commercial Studies, Western University
