Case information

None.

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 – Judicial review – Whether public law rule that reasons of collective decision-making body of public organization that has not been accused of bad faith or of acting in manner prejudicial to public interest are unknowable with exception of what was set out in resolution of that body is inapplicable merely because decision concerns labour law issue – Whether principle that reasons for decisions of such bodies are unknowable applies only to legislative, regulatory, policy or discretionary decisions, or also applies to decisions that are administrative or private in nature – Whether principle of deliberative secrecy or that of confidentiality of in camera proceeding applies exclusively to body performing adjudicative functions.

On June 29, 2009, the executive committee of the applicant Commission scolaire de Laval decided unanimously to terminate the employment of a teacher who was a member of the Syndicat de l’enseignement de la région de Laval (the “union”). The meeting that led to this decision had been held partly in public and partly in camera. The committee first ordered that the union and the teacher be heard in camera, and then asked the union and the teacher to withdraw so that it could deliberate, still in camera. The resolution setting out the decision to dismiss the teacher was subsequently adopted in a public meeting. That decision was contested by way of a grievance submitted to an arbitrator. In the course of the arbitration proceeding, the union summoned three members of the executive committee who had been at the meeting of June 29, 2009 to testify before the arbitrator. In a decision dated March 24, 2011, the arbitrator authorized the testimony of the three commissioner members, explaining that the executive committee did not benefit from “deliberative secrecy” and that it would be impossible to determine whether the termination of the employment relationship was consistent with the collective agreement [TRANSLATION] “without a detailed knowledge of the deliberations”.