Background
Homa Safaei, an Iranian Muslim woman, worked as a probationary pharmacy assistant at a hospital operated by the Vancouver Island Health Authority. After VIHA terminated her employment in 2016, she pursued a union grievance, a workers’ compensation claim for a work-related mental disorder, and a complaint before the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. The grievance and compensation proceedings were unsuccessful.
The human rights complaint alleged that Safaei’s manager and co-workers made three statements concerning immigrants, her country of origin, and immigrants taking jobs. VIHA sought summary dismissal under s. 27(1) of the Human Rights Code, arguing that prior proceedings had appropriately dealt with the complaint, that continuing would not further the Code’s purposes, and that the complaint had no reasonable prospect of success. The Tribunal rejected the application and allowed the complaint to proceed to a hearing.
On judicial review, the Supreme Court of British Columbia held that VIHA’s petition was not premature, found the Tribunal’s decision patently unreasonable under ss. 27(1)(d)(ii) and (f), and remitted those issues for reconsideration. Safaei appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeal allowed the appeal, set aside the reviewing judge’s order, and restored the Tribunal’s decision. It held that the judge erred in exercising his discretion to review the Tribunal’s interlocutory screening decision before the administrative process had concluded. The judge gave insufficient weight to the statutory context, delay, fragmentation, and wasted resources associated with early judicial intervention, and incorrectly assumed that finality principles could not be considered later in the proceeding.
The Court also held that the Tribunal’s decision was not patently unreasonable. WorkSafeBC and the Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal had addressed entitlement to compensation for a mental disorder and had not determined whether the three alleged statements were made or whether they constituted discrimination under the Human Rights Code. The reviewing judge misapprehended the record by stating that those bodies had found no discrimination.
Read holistically and deferentially, the Tribunal’s application of the factors from British Columbia (Workers’ Compensation Board) v Figliola was rational, legally supportable, and consistent with the evidence. The Court emphasized that patent unreasonableness is an exceptionally deferential standard and concluded that the reviewing judge had effectively conducted a disguised correctness review.
Key Takeaways
- Courts should ordinarily decline to review interlocutory administrative decisions until the tribunal has completed its process, absent exceptional circumstances.
- A prior proceeding does not necessarily dispose of a human rights complaint merely because it concerns the same workplace events; the factual and legal substance actually decided matters.
- Under patent-unreasonableness review, courts must assess the administrative decision holistically and deferentially rather than isolate disputed wording or reweigh the record.
Why It Matters
The decision reinforces judicial restraint toward preliminary screening decisions by specialized human rights tribunals. The fact that a particular summary-dismissal issue will not be reconsidered in precisely the same form at a merits hearing does not, by itself, justify immediate judicial review.
It also clarifies that findings made in workers’ compensation proceedings cannot automatically be treated as determinations of discrimination. The ruling restores only the Tribunal’s refusal to summarily dismiss Safaei’s complaint; it does not decide whether the alleged statements were made or whether VIHA violated the Human Rights Code.