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 recommends that the appeal be dismissed.