In Northern Regional Health Authority v Horrocks, 2021 SCC 42 [Horrocks], the majority of the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) held in a 6-1 decision that mandatory dispute resolution provisions under labour legislation confer exclusive jurisdiction to the designated decision-maker, usually a labour arbitrator. As a result, unionized employees will have little to no legal […]
In an unanimous decision, the Ontario Court of Appeal (“ONCA” or “the Court”) dismissed the Ontario government’s appeal against the $30 million solitary confinement class action. Francis v Ontario 2021 ONCA 197 [Francis] is a significant decision for two reasons. First, the ONCA upheld the motion judge’s finding that placing seriously mentally ill (“SMI”) inmates […]
How long is too long to wait for an administrative procedure to run its course? Has the answer changed given increasing focus on improving access to justice in the court system? Or does the COVID-19 pandemic potentially call for a total rethink of existing administrative law rules?
On March 9, 2021, the Ontario Court of Appeal (“ONCA”) ruled in favour of Ontario Nurses Association (“ONA”) and Service Employees International Union (“SEIU”) Local 1 on the pay equity case Ontario Nurses’ Association v Participating Nursing Homes, 2021 ONCA 148 [ONA v PNH]. The case was a judicial review of the Pay Equity Hearings […]
In Longueépée v University of Waterloo, 2020 ONCA 830, the Ontario Court of Appeal (“ONCA”) found that the University of Waterloo (“UW”)’s failure to consider the impact of a prospective transfer student’s previously undiagnosed and unaccommodated disabilities on his prior post-secondary grades discriminated against him on the basis of disability. In making this finding, the […]
The COVID-19 pandemic has shocked the country in its revelation of the systemic frailties plaguing Canada’s long-term care (“LTC”) system. Individuals over the age of 70 have made up almost 90% of the country’s deaths from COVID-19, and in the first wave of the pandemic, deaths in Canadian LTC facilities accounted for 80% of the […]
In a spousal immigration decision at the Federal Court last month, the legal definition of a conjugal relationship was expanded to include couples who have different sexual orientations — in this case, a gay man and straight woman. In AP v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2020 FC 906 [AP v Canada], Justice Janet M. Fuhrer […]
The question of overlapping jurisdiction between a human rights tribunal and a labour arbitrator on a complaint of discrimination is set to reach the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”), following the granting of a leave to appeal for Northern Regional Health Authority v Manitoba Human Rights Commission, 2017 MBCA 98 [Northern Regional], last month. Background […]
