Has Reasonableness Review Become Even More Robust? Piché c. Entreprises Y. Bouchard & Fils inc., 2024 QCCA 1374

In a post earlier this year analyzing the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent administrative law decisions, I noted how it would be “necessary to read the next entries in the standard-of-review catalogue very carefully to see if the Court is sending a signal about the level of intensity of reasonableness review under the Vavilov framework”.

As a detached observer, I have the luxury of time, but courts have to decide cases in the here and now. Last week’s decision of the Quebec Court of Appeal in Piché c. Entreprises Y. Bouchard & Fils inc., 2024 QCCA 1374 is very interesting. It suggests that the robust reasonableness review set out in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65, [2019] 4 SCR 653 may indeed have become more robust. Nonetheless, whilst quashing the decision at issue for unreasonableness, the Court of Appeal refrained from imposing a solution even in circumstances where it had been asked to find that there is only one possible, acceptable interpretation.

The underlying issue is very interesting. There are two streams of authority in Quebec’s Tribunal administratif du travail (which has jurisdiction over workplace health and safety) about compensating workers who withdrew from the workplace during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both the appellant and the Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité urged the Court of Appeal to resolve two interpretive questions on which the Tribunal is divided.

Here, the applicant was working as a paramedic. His doctors recommended that he temporarily withdraw from the workplace for his own safety as he was taking medication that made him immunodeficient. In the end, he went back to work about nine months after the outbreak. For a three-month period, he received no pay. Under Quebec legislation, an employee who withdraws from work for preventative health reasons can claim an indemnity. But there are several conditions (at para. 14), one of which is that the source of the danger to health must come from a “contaminant”. In this case (though not in others!), the Tribunal held that COVID-19 was not a “contaminant” within the meaning of the legislation. The Tribunal also held, based on its analysis of the evidence of his immunodeficiency, that the second condition – danger to the worker – was not met either. The Tribunal did not go on to consider the third condition – alteration of the worker’s health.

The Court of Appeal (Moore, Cournoyer and Bachand JJA) held that the decision was unreasonable. Following Vavilov, the judges did not apply the correctness standard to resolve the split on the Tribunal but noted that a deficient statutory interpretation analysis by an administrative decision-maker would justify intervention on judicial review for unreasonableness  (at para. 35). Indeed, they cited the Supreme Court’s decisions in Mason v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 SCC 21 and Ontario (Attorney General) v. Ontario (Information and Privacy Commissioner), 2024 SCC 4 as further support for this proposition:

C’est ainsi que, dans Mason, si la majorité de la Cour suprême a reconnu que le décideur avait appliqué plusieurs techniques d’interprétation législative reconnues, elle conclut tout de même au caractère déraisonnable de la décision au motif que le décideur n’a pas tenu compte de deux arguments du contexte législatif, des conséquences potentiellement importantes de la décision et des contraintes imposées par le droit international.

C’est ainsi encore que dans l’arrêt Ontario (Procureur général) c. Ontario (Commissaire à l’information et à la protection de la vie privée), bien que la majorité de la Cour suprême souligne que le décideur a pris en compte le texte, l’objectif général des lois sur l’accès à l’information et deux des objectifs de la confidentialité du Cabinet, elle conclut tout de même au caractère déraisonnable de la décision au motif que le décideur n’a pas traité d’un troisième objectif de la confidentialité du Cabinet, soit l’efficacité du processus décisionnel collectif ainsi que de certaines conventions constitutionnelles (at paras. 36-37).

Here, the decision was unreasonable because, in the first place, the Tribunal fixated on an amendment to the statutory scheme made in 2015 and gave it a much broader scope than the legislature intended (at para. 40), without regard for other textual and contextual indicators about the meaning of “contaminant” (at paras. 42-44). In addition, the Tribunal failed to have regard to the purpose of the legislature (at paras. 45-47). In the result, the Court of Appeal held — bolstered by Mason and Information Commissioner — that the statutory interpretation exercise undertaken by the Tribunal in the instant case neglected key elements of text, context and purpose and was, thus, unreasonable (at para. 48).

Interestingly, the Court of Appeal did not conclude, however (unlike the Supreme Court in Mason and Information Commissioner) that there was only one reasonable interpretation. Rather, it left the matter to the Tribunal, albeit with a stern warning about the desirability of legal certainty (at para. 51) and a reminder of the mechanisms available to achieve that certainty:

En l’espèce, il ressort qu’au moins trois avenues sont possibles : 1) la Covid-19 n’est pas un contaminant; 2) la Covid-19 est un contaminant; et 3) la Covid-19 est parfois un contaminant selon les activités de l’employeur. Quant à la controverse jurisprudentielle au sein du TAT, elle n’est pas ici suffisante pour justifier que la Cour tranche à la place de celui-ci. Comme la Cour suprême le rappelait, il convient de laisser d’abord au décideur administratif le soin de résoudre ce désaccord à l’aide de ses mécanismes internes, que ce soit, en ce qui concerne le TAT, la mise sur pied d’une formation de trois membres ou la participation des membres à l’élaboration d’orientations générales (at para. 50).

It said the same about the jurisprudential split on the third condition – the extent to which the “contaminant” has to affect the health of the worker (at paras. 66-70).

On the question of danger (the second condition), there is an interesting discussion of the role of the Tribunal. Even though the Tribunal sits de novo and potentially has access to a wide range of materials, its role in assessing danger is held to be limited. In short, its role is to assess whether there was danger at the moment the worker withdrew based on the evidence available at the time. In other words, the Tribunal cannot retrospectively apply evidence that became available after the worker’s withdrawal to conclude, with the benefit of hindsight, that there was no danger (at para. 55). The Tribunal may only take a forward-looking view of the matter, with the right to withdraw dissolving only prospectively, from the point the Tribunal has new evidence at its disposal (at para. 56).

On the evidence here, there was no doubt in the Court of Appeal’s eyes that there was ample evidence of danger at the moment the worker withdrew (at para. 57). Either, therefore, the Tribunal disregarded a legal constraint by focusing on danger retrospectively rather than prospectively or disregarded factual constraints by fundamentally misapprehending the evidence: unreasonableness was the inevitable conclusion (at para. 64). Again, the matter was returned to the Tribunal to determine the point at which the worker would have been able to safely reintegrate the workplace (at para. 65).

Overall, this decision indicates that Vavilov certainly does furnish the tools for a robust reasonableness review of administrative decisions. The Supreme Court’s recent decisions applying Vavilov are cited as further support for this proposition. Even if the Court of Appeal did send back the interpretive question about the first issue – “contaminant” – its analysis strongly favoured one of the streams of jurisprudence. Nonetheless, the Court of Appeal here did not go as far as the Supreme Court went in Mason and Information Commissioner, insisting instead that the matter should be returned to the Tribunal for the identification of a definitive answer albeit with a fairly  stern warning that the Tribunal should find a way to resolve its internal jurisprudential conflict in short order.

This content has been updated on October 21, 2024 at 16:22.