NC-260 - Harassment

In her harassment complaint form, the Appellant alleged six incidents of harassment by her supervisor. The Respondent mandated an investigation. The investigators obtained statements from the Appellant and the Alleged Harasser. The Appellant received a Preliminary Investigation Report (PIR) and provided a rebuttal with attachments. After the investigators completed the Final Investigation Report (FIR), the Respondent concluded that five incidents described in the FIR did not amount to harassment.

The Appellant appealed the Decision, arguing that the investigation was insufficient, the PIR was inaccurate, her PIR rebuttal attachments were not given to the Respondent, the FIR was inaccurate, the investigators were biased, the Respondent provided insufficient reasons and the Decision contained errors of fact and errors of law. 

The ERC found that four grounds of appeal were successful.

First, the investigators failed to conduct a thorough investigation. They did not interview two witnesses that possessed obviously crucial information.

Second, the PIR did not accurately summarize the information gathered by the investigators. This amounted to a breach of procedural fairness. The PIR did not include full statements from the parties. The summary in the PIR omitted an important detail from the Alleged Harasser’s statement regarding the fourth alleged incident. Furthermore, the PIR had no summary at all of the information gathered regarding the sixth alleged incident.

Third, the investigators failed to provide the Respondent with the attachments from the Appellant’s rebuttal to the PIR. This also amounted to a breach of procedural fairness because it interfered with the Appellant’s right to be heard.

Finally, the Respondent did not provide sufficient reasons in the Decision. She did not sufficiently explain why she concluded that the Alleged Harasser’s actions in the second and the fifth incident did not constitute harassment. Furthermore, she did not address the sixth incident described in the Complaint form at all.

The ERC recommends that the appeal be allowed, and that the matter be remitted to a new decision-maker with directions to mandate an informed investigation into all of the incidents described by the Appellant. The ERC recommends that the new decision fully address the behaviours described by the Appellant, as well as supporting materials and submissions from the parties.