C-114 – Conduct Board Decision

The Appellant was in a tumultuous romantic relationship, which resulted in four separate alleged breaches of section 7.1 of the RCMP Code of Conduct. All of the allegations related to the Appellant’s behaviour towards his former romantic partner and her children.

Following an investigation, the Conduct Authority referred the matter to a Conduct Board. The parties were able to come to an Agreed Statement of Facts, resulting in a short fact-finding phase prior to the parties providing their evidence regarding the appropriate measures. During the measures phase, the Appellant called the Appellant’s psychologist as a witness, who also provided an expert report in writing regarding the Appellant’s mental health. The Board ultimately did not place significant weight on the Appellant’s diagnosis as a mitigating factor.

All of the Appellant’s grounds of appeal centre on the probative value and weight of the evidence of the psychologist and his expert report. The Appellant alleges that the Board’s failure to respect the expert’s opinion related to the Appellant’s medical condition amounted to a breach of procedural fairness and a clearly unreasonable decision. In other words, the Appellant argues that the Board made an error in not making certain factual findings based on the expert evidence, which would be an error in assessing the probative value of the expert’s evidence. The Appellant believes that the Board should also have placed significantly greater emphasis on the Appellant’s medical condition as a mitigating factor. 

The ERC found that while there may be some concerns with the Board’s findings, the reasons provided for discounting the expert evidence were not clearly unreasonable. As well, there were no breaches of procedural fairness in assessing the expert evidence. The expert had the opportunity to respond to any concerns raised in the Decision.  

The ERC recommended that the appeal be dismissed. 

The Commissioner’s decision, as summarized by his office, is as follows:

In the summer of 2020, the Appellant was involved in a series of incidents with his intimate partner which led to four allegations against him related to discreditable conduct.

Relevant to this appeal, at the conduct hearing the Appellant led evidence from his psychologist who had made a diagnosis in November 2021. The psychologist was only able to use the words “could” or “may” as it related to the relationship between the diagnosis and the Appellant’s actions which led to the conduct allegations.

The Conduct Board issued a written decision in which all the allegations were established and the Appellant was discharged. In coming to this conclusion, the conduct board considered the evidence of the psychologist and found that there was insufficient evidence from the psychologist to give significant weight to the diagnosis.

The Appellant appealed and the matter was referred to the External Review Committee who recommended that the appeal be dismissed. The adjudicator considered the Appellant’s arguments and dismisses the Appeal as the Appellant failed to establish that the Respondent’s decision contravenes the applicable principles of procedural fairness, is based on an error of law, or is otherwise clearly unreasonable.