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Case summaries are prepared by the Office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada (Law Branch). Please note that summaries are not provided to the Judges of the Court. They are placed on the Court file and website for information purposes only.

Labour relations - Grievances - Jurisdiction of arbitrator - Labour standards - Scope of Parry Sound (District) Social Services Administration Board v. O.P.S.E.U., Local 324, [2003] 2 S.C.R. 157, and Isidore Garon ltée v. Tremblay; Fillion et Frères (1976) inc. v. Syndicat national des employés de garage du Québec inc., [2006] 1 S.C.R. 27 - Whether substantive standard of public order established in s. 124 of Act respecting labour standards, R.S.Q., c. N-1.1, according to which employee with more than two years of uninterrupted service may not be dismissed without good and sufficient cause, forms part of implicit content of collective agreements.

Four appeals that were submitted to the Court at the same time raise the issue of whether the appropriate forum for deciding a complaint of dismissal without good and sufficient cause under s. 124 A.L.S. is a grievance arbitrator or the Commission des relations du travail. Section 124 A.L.S. provides that “[a]n employee credited with two years of uninterrupted service in the same enterprise who believes that he has not been dismissed for a good and sufficient cause may present his complaint in writing to the Commission des normes du travail . . . except where a remedial procedure, other than a recourse in damages, is provided elsewhere in this Act, in another Act or in an agreement”.

Each of the appeals concerns an individual in unstable employment. This case concerns a teacher whose contract had not been renewed following an assessment process. Under the collective agreement, there were three grounds on which she could grieve that decision: non-compliance with the established assessment procedure, bias, or inconsistency in the reasons given for the decision. She was credited with two years of uninterrupted service within the meaning of s. 124 A.L.S. The Applicant union filed a grievance alleging that the employee had been dismissed without good and sufficient cause within the meaning of s. 124 A.L.S. and that, because that provision of public order is implicitly incorporated into the collective agreement, the arbitrator had jurisdiction to decide the grievance. The employer objected. The arbitrator decided that he did not have jurisdiction to dispose of the grievance under s. 124 A.L.S. The Superior Court reversed his decision. But the Court of Appeal held that only the Commission has jurisdiction to decide complaints based on s. 124 A.L.S., since the legislature had assigned the application of the provision to an expert tribunal other than the grievance arbitrator where the parties have not freely chosen to incorporate it into the collective agreement.