Gazette Midday: Supreme Court overrules rights tribunal on discrimination case
, Published on: July 23, 2015 | Last Updated: July 23, 2015 12:00 PM EDT, Source
The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that Bombardier Inc. did not racially discriminate against a Canadian pilot by denying him training in 2004. In 2010, the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal dealt a landmark fine to Bombardier for refusing to train Javed Latif, a Canadian citizen from Pakistan, ruling that the company racially discriminated against him. The total amount, $319,000, was for replacement of the income he lost, punitive damages and moral damages. The amount for punitive damages, $50,000, was the highest for punitive damages that the tribunal had ever given. The Quebec Court of Appeal overruled the tribunal ruling and it went before the Supreme Court of Canada. In its judgment released Thursday morning, the Supreme Court says there was a lack of evidence showing a clear connection “between Mr. Latif’s ethnic or national origin and the decision of the U.S. authorities, and therefore Bombardier’s decision to deny Mr. Latif’s training request.”
A group of 140 lawyers have signed a petition forcing an extraordinary general assembly of the Quebec Bar in relation to the suspension of president Lu Chan Khuong. Bar regulations allow that a petition of 100 or more members forces the Bar to hold an assembly. “We are very preoccupied by the actions taken and resolutions adopted by the administrators of the Bar, on July 1, 2015. These resolutions have no basis in law,” said Jimmy Troeung, a spokesperson for the group. The assembly will be held Aug. 24 starting at 5:30 p.m. at the Sheraton Laval. Earlier this month, Khuong demanded her suspension be lifted and that Bar administrators issue an apology.
The case of a Montreal man who is accused of violating the terms of a terrorism-related peace bond will return to court in November. A summons was issued in February for Merouane Ghalmi after the RCMP expressed fear he would commit a terrorism offence. Because the contents of a sworn affidavit have been sealed, it is still not known why the Mounties are concerned about him. Ghalmi signed off on the peace bond at the end of March, agreeing to several conditions including one that prohibited him from consulting or attempting to look up materials that promote violence or religious or political extremism. He was arrested in May on suspicion of violating that specific condition but he was granted bail.
And finally, in a Quebec first, a team of physicians at the McGill University Health Centre has infused a woman with Type I diabetes with insulin-producing cells, avoiding the need for a potentially risky organ-transplant operation and the lengthy hospital stay associated with it. The hour-long procedure was carried out on May 23 at the MUHC superhospital and was the culmination of a decade of research. The MUHC hopes it will become a centre of excellence for the procedure — known as an islet transplant — for eastern Quebec and the northeast United States. There is only one other centre in Canada, in Edmonton, that has developed the ultra-specialized expertise to perform islet transplants. The MUHC has already attracted researchers from Boston to learn more about its program. “We certainly hope that this will not only be an MUHC network resource but a Quebec resource, and that transplant centres in Eastern Canada and Ontario will use us,” said Dr. Steven Paraskevas, director of the program.
