HUMAN RIGHTS TRIBUNAL OF ONTARIO
B E T W E E N:
Mazigh Massyles
Applicant
-and-
Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Ontario as represented by the Ministry of the Attorney General
Respondent
DECISION
Adjudicator: Geneviève Debané
Indexed as: Massyles v. Ontario (Attorney General)
APPEARANCES
Mazigh Massyles, Applicant
Self-represented
Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Ontario as represented by the Ministry of the Attorney General, Respondent
Fatema Dada, Counsel
Introduction
1This is an Application filed under section 34 of Part IV of the Human Rights Code, R.S.O. 1990, c. H.19, as amended (the “Code”), alleging discrimination with respect to services because of age, ancestry, creed, ethnic origin, place of origin, race and sex.
2In a Case Assessment Direction dated April 23, 2012, the Tribunal, of its own initiative, directed that a summary hearing be held to determine whether the Application had no reasonable prospect of success. The respondent was advised that it did not have to file a Response.
3On October 5, 2012, a summary hearing was held via conference call during which all parties participated. A French-English Interpreter was made available to the parties during the summary hearing. No parties filed any written submissions in advance of the hearing.
BACKGROUND
4Since no Response was filed by the respondent, the summary of facts in this Decision is based solely on the applicant’s version of the events.
5On April 15, 2009, the applicant pled guilty to a traffic violation and as a result he was convicted of the offence. He then appealed this conviction and the conviction was quashed.
6The applicant states that in early 2010, he attended Court so that the conviction could be removed from his record. The applicant then left Canada for a period of four to five months. He also legally changed his name.
7Upon his return to Canada, he was advised by his insurance company that his premiums would be increasing because of the conviction. The applicant states that he was surprised because he believed that the conviction had been removed from his record.
8On June 29, 2011, the applicant sent an email to the Court asking that the conviction be removed from his record. There is then a series of communications by emails because the Court Administration Supervisor (the “Supervisor”) could not locate the applicant’s record under the name he provided. The Supervisor advised that she believed that it was likely that there had been a lack of communication between the Ministry of the Attorney General and the Ministry of Transportation.
9On July 4, 2012, the applicant sent an email to the Court which gave his former legal name. A few hours later the same day the Supervisor sent the applicant an email confirming that she had located the record under his former name and that she had advised the Ministry of Transportation that the record should be amended. In this same email, the Supervisor explained, “I was correct in my assumption that the Ministry of the Attorney general did not notify the Ministry of Transportation that your appeal had been allowed”.
10On August 8, 2012, the applicant wrote to the Manager, Court Operations, in which he accuses that he has been subjected to a “premeditated and intentional act of racism and discrimination”, stating: “I am being subjected to disparate treatment based upon illegal factors such as my race, origin, sex and so on and no other reason can explain this kind of behaviour”. The applicant then requests “the payment of compensation for the damage caused by your staff and leave it to you to evaluate it, because I also make the same request to my insurance company (State Farm), but without hope of repayment”.
11During the conference, the applicant stated that all differences in treatment are discriminatory. Further, the applicant believes that since there is no reasonable explanation for the respondent’s failure to clear his record of the conviction that this means that the respondent’s motive must have been discriminatory.
DECISION
12Having reviewed both the written and oral submissions of the applicant, I find that this Application has no reasonable prospect of success and dismiss it for the reasons that follow.
13The Tribunal explains the nature of summary hearings in the decision of Dabic v. Windsor Police Service, 2010 HRTO 1994, at paras. 8 and 9:
In some cases, the issue at the summary hearing may be whether, assuming all the allegations in the application to be true, it has a reasonable prospect of success. In these cases, the focus will generally be on the legal analysis and whether what the applicant alleges may be reasonably considered to amount to a Code violation.
In other cases, the focus of the summary hearing may be on whether there is a reasonable prospect that the applicant can prove, on a balance of probabilities, that his or her Code rights were violated. Often, such cases will deal with whether the applicant can show a link between an event and the grounds upon which he or she makes the claim. The issue will be whether there is a reasonable prospect that evidence the applicant has or that is reasonably available to him or her can show a link between the event and the alleged prohibited ground.
14The applicant believes that the reason that his record was not cleared of the conviction, earlier, was motivated by discriminatory reasons based on prohibited grounds. However, the applicant has not pointed to any evidence that establishes, or from which an inference could be drawn, that he was subjected to discrimination in a manner contrary to the Code. All of his beliefs are based on pure speculation with no factual underpinning which could reasonably link the respondent’s actions in this case to a prohibited ground of discrimination.
15I find that the applicant therefore has no reasonable prospect of establishing that the respondent’s conduct infringed his rights under the Code.
16The Application is dismissed.
Dated at Toronto, this 30th day of October, 2012.
“Signed by”
Geneviève Debané
Vice-chair