Worker's employment terminated two days after revealing pregnancy
The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal has dismissed a worker’s application alleging a discriminatory dismissal related to her pregnancy, ruling that the matter had already been “appropriately dealt with” by a prior proceeding with the province’s Ministry of Labour.
The worker was a new hire in early 2022 and, on her first day of work, she told her employer that she was pregnant. Two days later, on her third day of work, the employer terminated her employment.
On May 30, the worker filed a complaint with the Ontario Ministry of Labour alleging that her dismissal was a reprisal that breached the province’s Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA). On July 12, she made an application to the tribunal claiming that her dismissal was employment discrimination because of pregnancy, in breach of the Ontario Human Rights Code. The discrimination application used the same language as the employment standards complaint.
In response to the worker’s employment standards complaint, the Ministry of Labour assigned an employment standards officer to investigate. On Sept. 8, the officer determined that the employer breached the ESA and ordered the company to pay the worker the equivalent of one week’s wages plus $250 for “emotional pain and suffering.”
Employment standards decision addressed same issues
Shortly after the employment standards officer’s decision, the tribunal directed the worker and the employer to make submissions on whether the worker’s discrimination application should be dismissed under s. 45.1 of the code, which allows the tribunal to dismiss applications when the substance of a complaint has already been addressed by another proceeding.
The tribunal noted that the purpose of s. 45.1 of the code was to “prevent duplication of proceedings and re-litigation of issues already determined in another forum” or someone trying to seek a better outcome if dissatisfied with the result of a proceeding. It also noted that it had been well-established that an employment standards officer’s review and decision was a “proceeding” for the purposes of s. 45.1.
The tribunal applied four factors established by the Supreme Court of Canada: concurrent jurisdiction of the other proceeding, identical issues addressed in both proceedings, the worker’s opportunity to know and present the case, and the fairness of relying on the decision in the other proceeding.
Jurisdiction to consider discrimination allegations
The tribunal found that the Ministry of Labour and its employment standards officers had jurisdiction to consider discrimination allegations under the code, as had been established in previous decisions. Although the worker argued that an employment standards officer doesn’t have “the expertise or experience to handle human rights cases,” the tribunal noted that “expertise and experience are not synonymous with jurisdiction.”
The worker acknowledged that the issue before both the ministry and the tribunal was the same - whether her dismissal was motivated by her pregnancy - but maintained that a ruling under the ESA was different than a ruling under the code. However, the tribunal found the issues in each proceeding were identical and sufficient to satisfy the requirement that the ministry had addressed the same core concerns.
The worker argued that she hadn’t been given a full opportunity to present her case under the code and that the Ministry’s award didn’t reflect the “humiliation or embarrassment” she suffered because of her dismissal. However, the tribunal found that the worker had presented her case through various forms of evidence, including oral and written statements, which were ultimately accepted by the employment standards officer. The tribunal noted that while the worker may have been dissatisfied with the damages awarded by the employment standards officer, the appropriate recourse would have been an appeal to the Ontario Labour Relations Board, not a new human rights application, as the tribunal’s job wasn’t to judicially review another adjudicative body’s decision.
Procedural fairness
As for the fairness of relying on the employment standards officer’s decision, the worker said that she was unaware that her human rights application – filed about six weeks after her employment standards complaint and before the officer’s decision - could be barred if she pursued her complaint with the ministry. The tribunal determined that the employment standards officer’s decision was reached through fair procedure and re-hearing the case would create a risk of conflicting findings on the same facts – something that s. 45.1 of the code was specifically meant to prevent.
The tribunal determined that proceeding with the worker’s discrimination application would effectively re-litigate matters already resolved by the ministry and dismissed the application, finding that her complaint had been fully and fairly addressed in the prior proceeding. See Fralick v. Negandhi, 2024 HRTO 1333.
