Mr. Wilson worked for AECL from May 2005 until his termination on November 16, 2009. He then filed a CLC unjust dismissal complaint, presumably in early 2010.
It took two years to get to arbitration at which time Arbitrator Shiff made a preliminary ruling that said simply paying statutory notice and severance pay did not avoid the remedies section of the CLC. This was judicially reviewed first by the Federal Court, Trial Division, then the Federal Court of Appeal and finally to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled in Mr Wilson’s favour.
I thought that at that point, having won, Mr Wilson would either get his back pay and reinstatement or just a whole lot of money.
Nope. The matter was referred to a new arbitrator, Michael Bendal. Seven years after the fact, AECL raised for the very first time, a new jurisdictional defence involving the application of Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act, a whistle blowing statute intended to protect whistleblowers from retaliation.
AECL lost again before Bendel. ( 2017 CarswellNat 6877) Another set of dates will be set to finally hear the merits. That is unless AECL again seeks judicial review of the rejection of their jurisdictional argument.
I thought that there was a principle of administrative law which said that a Court should wait until the administrative procedure is completed before judicially reviewing the case, in order to avoid this start and stop process. One can only hope that if AECL tries to judicially review this newest ruling that the Court will tell them to wait until the case is over and then file their comprehensive application,
Justice delayed in justice denied.