Emma Phillips

The applicant sought judicial review of two Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario decisions finding she breached the confidentiality and non-disparagement clauses of a settlement agreement by posting about her human rights complaint on LinkedIn.

The Tribunal had ordered the applicant to repay the full settlement amount as liquidated damages and granted an anonymization order protecting the respondents' identities.

The Divisional Court dismissed the application, finding the Tribunal's interpretation of the settlement agreement, its enforcement of the liquidated damages clause, and its decision to grant anonymization were all reasonable.

The Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada (ARCC) brought a motion for leave to intervene as a friend of the court in an application for judicial review.

The underlying application challenged the City of Hamilton's decision to reject an advertisement submitted by the applicants for display on the City's transit system.

The court applied the test for intervention and found that ARCC had a real, substantial, and identifiable interest in the issues, and would provide a useful and distinct perspective regarding the broader potential impact of the decision.

The motion for leave to intervene was granted subject to conditions limiting the scope and length of ARCC's submissions.

The York University Faculty Association brought a motion to be added as a party or intervenor in a judicial review application challenging a decision of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.

The applicant, who was self-represented, clarified during the hearing that he was abandoning any challenge to the Tribunal's decision regarding the Association's status or participation.

Based on this concession, the court found it was not necessary to add the Association as a party under Rule 5.03 to effectively adjudicate the issues.

The court dismissed the Association's motion and the applicant's cross-motion, with no costs awarded.

The applicant faculty association sought judicial review of an arbitration award that dismissed a policy grievance regarding the university's publication of student evaluations of teaching (SET) scores.

The arbitrator had found that publishing the scores did not violate the collective agreement or the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA).

The Divisional Court applied the Dunsmuir framework, determining that the standard of review for the collective agreement interpretation was reasonableness, and for the FIPPA interpretation was correctness.

The court upheld the arbitrator's decision, finding her interpretation of 'personal information' in the collective agreement reasonable and her application of the employment-related records exclusion in FIPPA correct.

The application for judicial review was dismissed.

The Ministry of the Attorney General sought judicial review of two orders by the Information and Privacy Commissioner requiring the disclosure of total dollar figures for legal services rendered to other ministries.

The Ministry argued the information was protected by solicitor-client privilege under s. 19 of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

The Divisional Court dismissed the applications, finding the IPC correctly applied the rebuttable presumption of privilege test from Maranda v. Richer and reasonably concluded the presumption was rebutted because disclosing the aggregate amounts would not reveal privileged communications.