NC-284 - Harssment

The Appellant submitted a harassment complaint against the Alleged Harasser, who was a supervisor at her workplace. The Complaint form listed seven alleged incidents of harassment. The Appellant also attached several documents, which described 21 additional incidents of harassment and included a chronology of her interactions with the Alleged Harasser. The Respondent concluded that the Alleged Harasser had not engaged in harassment towards the Appellant.

On appeal, the Appellant argued that the harassment investigation was not sufficiently thorough, was biased, and was conducted contrary to policy. The Appellant submitted that the Respondent should have dealt with her complaints against multiple Alleged Harassers together. Furthermore, the Appellant believed that the Respondent’s Decision contained insufficient reasons, errors of law and an error of fact.

The ERC found that the harassment investigation was sufficiently thorough, that there was no investigator bias, and that the investigators complied with policy in how they formatted the Final Investigation Report and how they discussed the format with the Harassment Advisor.

The ERC observed that combining harassment complaints against multiple Alleged Harassers would be at odds with authorities governing the RCMP’s harassment complaint process.

The ERC found that the Respondent did not provide sufficient reasons in the Decision. The Decision addressed all of the incidents described in the Appellant’s Complaint form, as well as some of the incidents described in the attachments and chronology. However, the Decision ignored a number of incidents that the Appellant described in the attachments, and the Respondent provided no explanation for why he chose not to address them. Since the Appellant was successful in challenging the Decision, the ERC found it unnecessary to comment on the Appellant’s concerns with other aspects of the Decision, including alleged errors of law and an error of fact.

The ERC recommends that the appeal be allowed, and that the matter be remitted to a new decision-maker with directions to fully address the behaviours described in the Appellant’s complaint, the supporting materials and submissions from the parties.