'I didn't tell you to start. This is my company. Nice try': Insurance agency dismisses worker after mat leave
The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario has ordered an insurance agency to pay $17,246 to an administrative assistant fired on the eve of her return from a 12-month maternity leave.
Vice-chair Will McNair and member Karen Borovay found that SD Financial Services discriminated against the employee because of family status.
She worked as an administrative assistant at the insurance agency starting in 2016 and was paid $14.04 per hour.
The assistant took 12 months' maternity leave beginning in February 2018, during which she gave birth to her third child.
On Friday, Feb. 1, 2019, she wrote to her employer to confirm she would be back the following Monday. According to the decision, her employer, Sadrudin Khushal, replied: "Call me. I didn't tell you to start. This is my company. Nice try." He then declined to respond to messages from the applicant and her husband.
After losing her job, she sought similar work but was told she required an insurance licence. The COVID-19 pandemic further hampered her search; she was hired as a cashier at Canadian Tire in 2023. She has since obtained her licence and resumed searching for work in the field.
Discrimination claim ignored
The application was filed on June 7, 2019. The respondent filed a response but, instead of addressing the discrimination claim, asked the tribunal to dismiss the application as an abuse of process, citing minutes of settlement the applicant had signed in an earlier Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB) matter.
The tribunal declined, noting the OLRB settlement predated the termination and related to a salary dispute, and so did not extinguish the applicant's right to bring this application.
The respondent then stopped communicating and was deemed, in an interim decision to have waived further participation. No one appeared for the respondent at the May 6, 2026 hearing, where the applicant was represented by her husband.
On the merits, the tribunal accepted the applicant's uncontradicted account, finding that the respondent, "having agreed to continue to employ the applicant after her maternity leave, instead fired her on the eve of her return to work." It accepted on a balance of probabilities that her family status was a factor in the termination.
Inflation enters damages calculation
Section 10(1) of the Human Rights Code defines family status as "the status of being in a parent and child relationship." As the mother of a newborn, the applicant was entitled to the code's protection. The tribunal awarded one month's lost wages of $2,246, finding it unclear that she could not have obtained another minimum-wage position or would have continued working for the respondent through the pandemic.
On dignity damages, the tribunal surveyed past awards in pregnancy or family status terminations, ranging from $10,000 to $20,000. It noted the applicant was a mother of three young children, including a child under one year old, and that her family had to rely solely on her husband's income, which "engendered significant anxiety for both parents."
The tribunal added that "an award of $10,000 in 2007 is not the same as an award of $10,000 in 2026," and that it must account for the effect of inflation. It set dignity damages at $15,000 and ordered $17,246 payable within 60 days, plus prejudgment interest from Feb. 4, 2019 under section 128 of the Courts of Justice Act, with post-judgment interest under section 129 of the same Act if unpaid.
