Chan v UBC discrimination case sent back to BC Human Rights Tribunal

by Stephen Petrina on June 5, 2013

The University of British Columbia’s petition to dismiss Dr. Jennifer Chan’s complaint of racial discrimination must go back to the BC Human Rights Tribunal says a 29 May 2013 BC Supreme Court’s judgment. The BCHRT’s decision on 24 January 2012 to hear the Chan v UBC and others [Beth Haverkamp, David Farrar, Jon Shapiro, Rob Tierney] case was moved to the Supreme Court for a judicial review. In addition to the BCHRT decision and Supreme Court judgment, the Ubyssey’s (UBC student newspaper) feature article provides a background to the case.

In the Supreme Court judgment, Madam Justice Loo argues that the BCHRT must assess whether “the complaint has been appropriately dealt with in another proceeding.” A decision within the BCHRT to hear the case must address UBC’s argument that “internal university processes [used to hear Chan’s appeals] qualified under the Code as ‘proceedings’ that had appropriately addressed the substance of” Chan’s complaint. Chan “asserts that she has exhausted the internal complaint mechanism of UBC and that it was flawed.”