Current Case Status

As a reminder, the last forward action on the suit was that in May, UBC provided deficient disclosure documents and filed an Application to Dismiss the case. My lawyer and I countered with letters addressing both the extreme deficiency (using two dozen pages to describe in great detail the kinds of documents we expected to receive, but did not), and putting UBC and the Tribunal on notice that we would like to set aside the usual Application to Dismiss deadlines so that we could work something out informally. That is, we hoped that instead of going through the formal process of filing my own Application to ask the Tribunal to order the university to produce documents, UBC would undergo a revision of its opinion on the documents to which I am entitled in litigation, and provide them without further ado.

Well, there’s no evidence of the latter happening. In the interim UBC proposed a daylong “case management conference” to discuss differences of opinion, but there’s been no forward motion on actually scheduling such a thing (for which I would take time off work). In the absence of any reply, my lawyer communicated that we expected a substantive response – that is, UBC needs to do more with our May letter than ignore it, if we are going to agree to such a conference. We are waiting on UBC’s response.

In other news, right after starting a brand-new PR campaign, the Tribunal accepted the human rights complaint of six employees (or, as reported by the Ubyssey and others, eight employees) alleging that UBC exhibited a systematic pattern of discrimination against them based on either disability or pregnancy. Individual employees are named, including Gage Averill, Blye Frank, Jennifer Burns, and Gord Binstead. Meanwhile, at UBCO, students rallied to support a female student who said she was raped on campus (with, apparently, UBCO denying it happened there), where student organizer Temi Adeyemi is apparently furious, according to the Castanet story. Other coverage has a decidedly different spin, appearing to imply Adeyemi’s work to create the rally was done with UBCO’s blessing and support – done in the name of amorphous “awareness” rather than in response to specific failures rooted in personal experience. (It should be noted that I am critical of Shilo St. Cyr, head of UBCO SVPRO, because of disclosures by UBCO students to me regarding her actions to dissuade reports, and because St. Cyr openly admits she believes the new Policy 131 “goes too far,” whatever that means, but presumably it means resources are better spent on “awareness” campaigns suggesting that foolish, fragile victims are the problem, rather than posing hard questions about how UBC fails to address reporting barriers.) There was also, apparently, a student wanting to speak about their rape after receiving a cease-and-desist letter and being accused of lying earlier this month – but the UBCO student paper The Phoenix’s link is broken, suggesting to me that the alleged rapist knows that threats work.

Meanwhile, at UBC Vancouver, students are freaked out after a voyeur incident in September, and the university is doing nothing in particular (besides buying television ads), which might be why they feel that way?

And Policy 131 is getting under formal review, as required by the law, starting back in September 2019 and going to May 2020. It remains to be seen whether UBC will make a good faith effort to solicit student opinion – a review feature required by the law, which is also, unfortunately, an undefined term.

I am not aware of any forward progress since my August update. We are simply waiting for scheduling a talk with UBC, the Tribunalmember, and myself to discuss the disclosure problems.

My apologies for a late update. Last week I had scheduled an immigration interview with my spouse and we were preparing documents for that. As a result, I missed the usual mid-month deadline.

There was a development in Mandi Gray’s case against York University. She has filed a complaint for breach of settlement against York, because it signed a four year contract to provide consistent, quality, unaffiliated counseling services with the Barbara Schliffer Clinic, which it signed late and terminated a mere 11 months in, after jerking the organization around so it could not promise its clients the consistent care they needed. York also has degrading language about Ms. Gray up on its website, and has failed to remove it per the terms of its agreement. Naturally, York posits that it has done nothing wrong and that it “supports” survivors. You can read the breach of settlement document here. Ms. Gray’s case, as the first in the country, provides a model for the kind of remedies UBC, the Tribunal, and I may look to in order to redress the discrimination I describe in Kirchmeier v. UBC. Of course, it also provides a model for the kind of bad faith behaviour that I will be on the lookout for.