A labour arbitrator has awarded a former Vancouver police officer $30,000 in her years-long grievance process over how the Vancouver Police Department handled sexual harassment and discrimination complaints.
The decision handed down Sept. 26 says the original grievance was filed by the Vancouver Police Union in May 2021 on behalf of a female member who had been sexually assaulted by a fellow officer in 2019.
The woman, who isn't named in the decision, alleged she was the subject of "widespread" gossip and rumours in the department after the assault, which led to a conviction for the attacker and sentence of a year in jail in 2022.
The former Vancouver police officer said in an interview that the arbitrator's decision was meaningful, even though "there isn't an amount of money that is going to undo any of it."
Her grievance alleged the police department breached its collective agreement with the union, the Human Rights Code, the Workers' Compensation Act and the department's respectful workplace policy by failing to properly handle her complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination after she was assaulted.
She said the arbitrator's decision and award "speaks to just how awful the system is and that it is likely being used in a manner that it wasn't meant to be used."
The decision shows how the Police Act is ill-designed to deal with sexual harassment or assault allegations involving police officers as either perpetrators or victims, she said.
She made complaints under the force's respectful workplace policy for comments allegedly made by officers in a WhatsApp chat group and by an officer who allegedly "diminished the seriousness" of the assault against her.
The former member said she went through the proper channels to make her complaints with the department, but they were "completely out of my control" once the Police Act processes played out.
"I'm a worker in British Columbia employed by an organization in British Columbia and I should be afforded certain rights," she said. "But the Police Act strips you of those."
She said the act only mentions misconduct by police, and doesn't include language involving sexual assault, harassment or victims, yet it's relied upon in workplace investigations in municipal police departments.
"There's a reason it was never meant to be used for this," she said. "And this arbitration award indicates that."
The decision says the Vancouver Police Board, as her employer, forwarded the complaints to the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, which ordered the investigations under the Police Act.
The union grievance complained that those investigations provided the officer with "very few rights" and the process didn't remedy her experience of workplace sexual harassment.
It also argued that the investigations didn't "fulfil nor absolve" the police department from its obligations to provide her with a harassment-free workplace.
Arbitrator Corinn Bell wrote that the sexual assault was the "tragic background" to the officer's complaints, but the grievance was not "directly" related to the assault.
Bell said she had "no reason to doubt" that the investigations were thorough and complete.
"However, I do not have sufficient evidence to conclude that the broad workplace issues were investigated or considered," she wrote.
The decision says it "remains a mystery" how the Police Act investigations considered human rights and workers' compensation legislation, but also found that the woman was not afforded procedural rights "without explanation or warning" while the investigations occurred.
The Vancouver Police Board had earlier tried to get the grievance dismissed, alleging it was an "impermissible collateral attack on findings of fact and conclusions" made under the Police Act.
The union argued the grievance was about the "separate and distinct obligations" under the Human Rights Code, the Workers' Compensation Act and the respectful workplace policy, "which was not meaningfully addressed but only referenced in a cursory manner in the Police Act processes."
The arbitrator found that there was both a violation of the Human Rights Code and the respectful workplace policy in this case, finding that a notation placed on the complainants' personnel file was discriminatory.
She also found the complainant's sexual assault was "undoubtably a factor" when a superior noted in a 2019 performance appraisal that her “timing may not be best” in seeking a promotion.
"Sadly, sexual assault is a gendered crime. The VPD would be very aware of this fact. It was in the wake of this crime (alleged at the time) that the griever was dealing with the fact that the perpetrator was a colleague and that she would have to navigate her workplace as part of her reality," the award decision says. "That reality for her, and indeed for the employer, included trying to minimize the spread of the information about the situation."
The woman said she wants the decision to shed light on how municipal police departments mistreat female officers, including through an ongoing class-action lawsuit against a number of B.C. municipalities and their police departments.
"My focus is to get the words on paper, to say this system is being executed in a manner that it shouldn't be and it has become a discriminatory practice towards female officers," she said. "I hope that it leads to some sort of systemic change."
She said she also hopes the decision is a "wake-up call" for the provincial government.
"The provincial government created the system and they left it to people below them to execute the system, and I hope they realize exactly what the people below them are doing," she said. "It was meant to silence people like me."
Lawyers for the Vancouver Police Board and the Vancouver Police Union did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the arbitrator's decision.
Picture Courtesy: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby
