Correctional officer alleges discrimination after failed training leads to dismissal
A South Korean immigrant to Canada who alleged his employer orchestrated "a series of unusual, extraordinary measures to set him up to fail" during correctional officer training has lost his discrimination complaint.
Hired in May 2016 at British Columbia's Okanagan Regional Correctional Centre, he was terminated twice during Security Officer Training—once in March 2017 after failing written exams, then permanently in April 2017 after failing role-playing scenarios designed to test communication and conflict resolution skills.
He argued that the training was discriminatory and did not accommodate his English language skills. He further alleged that during training, the respondents targeted him and discriminated against him, including in his evaluations, on human rights grounds.
He alleged discrimination in employment on the grounds of age, ancestry, place of origin, and race.
However, the BC Human Rights Tribunal dismissed the complaint, finding no reasonable prospect he could prove his protected characteristics were a factor in his termination.
Were training exams discriminatory?
The individual alleged multiple acts of targeting during his March training. He claimed instructors scheduled a written exam immediately after a lengthy meeting that caused him to miss class content, then allowed an open-book test but only permitted notes—not textbooks—while he was the only trainee without notes after missing the lecture.
When he passed that retest, he said the exam format arbitrarily switched from open-book to closed-book for subsequent tests.
The allegations escalated in April when the individual was investigated for borrowing another trainee's notebook from an earlier training cohort. He argued this investigation was discriminatory targeting, but the court found he was the only trainee with notes from a previous cohort that could potentially contain exam questions and answers.
During role-play assessments that month, the individual claimed he received positive feedback from an instructor on his first scenario, only to have her later declare it "problematic" in a complete reversal.
Most dramatically, he pointed to a report timestamped 1:02 PM declaring he failed crisis intervention role-plays that he claimed didn't begin until 1:00 PM. The Tribunal found these allegations remained speculation, concluding: "[The complainant] provides no evidence in support of his belief" that "the individual assessors colluded and conspired to remove him from the training program."
Court: ‘No reasonable prospect’
On the note-sharing investigation, the court found no evidence the individual was unfairly singled out. The concern was that notes from a previous cohort "could potentially contain exam questions and answers," and there was no evidence anyone else had such notes.
Regarding the 1:02 PM report, the instructor’s affidavit explained that she wrote the assessment that morning based on earlier failures, and had already informed the individual that he could participate in afternoon role-plays but would not advance regardless.
The conflict in evidence "was not material," the court found, because prior failures already determined the outcome. The tribunal's core finding stood: "There is no reasonable prospect that the Tribunal would find after a full hearing that [the complainant’s] protected characteristics were a factor in the adverse impacts."
Justice Latimer emphasized that tribunals are "entitled to be presumed to have considered all of the evidence and arguments before it, even if the Tribunal member did not consider it necessary or worthwhile to recite all of the evidence and arguments in their decision."
The petitioner must displace this presumption—the complainant’s evidence did not.
