CITATION: To v. Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa, 2021 ONSC 3721

DIVISIONAL COURT FILE NO.: 592/20

DATE: 20210521

SUPERIOR COURT OF JUSTICE – ONTARIO

DIVISIONAL COURT

RE: Ava To, Applicant

AND:

Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa, Child and Family Services et al., Respondents

BEFORE: D.L. Corbett J.

COUNSEL: Ms To, self-represented Applicant

IN WRITING, IN CHAMBERS

ENDORSEMENT

[1] Ms To writes to the court requesting: (a) amendment of the title of proceedings and citation; (b) anonymization of this court’s R.2.1 decision dismissing her application for judicial review from the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal; (c) a warning and publication ban pursuant to the Child and Family Services Act (CFSA); and (d) ancillary relief. For the following reasons all of these requests are refused.

[2] Ms To’s notice of application is not anonymized and does not include a warning under the CFSA. The endorsement from this court thus reflected the form in which Ms To, herself, filed her paperwork with this court.

[3] The proceeding before this court is not a proceeding under the CFSA. It is a proceeding under the Human Rights Code. No automatic warning applies in this circumstance.

[4] This does not end the matter, of course. The relevant provisions of the CFSA are intended to protect the identity of children, so that private and sensitive information relating to those children will not be disclosed publicly. Ms To’s proceedings in this court are based on allegations that her human rights were violated in the course of child protection proceedings. Had those human rights proceedings moved forward on the merits, it could have been that the record included sensitive personal information tending to disclose the identities and other personal information of children whose identities are protected under the CFSA. In those circumstances, it could have been appropriate to take steps such as those now requested by Ms To.

[5] However, that is not what has happened. Upon receipt of Ms To’s notice of application, this court issued a notice pursuant to R.2.1. Ms To refused to respond to that notice substantively and as a result her application was dismissed by this court. This court’s reasons for the dismissal reveal that Ms To’s claims are based on child protection proceedings in which she was unsuccessful, identify two child welfare respondents, and identify Ms To by name. They do not otherwise disclose any information that could tend to identify the children or anything about them. The original child welfare proceedings were subject to the protections stipulated in the CFSA, and those protections continue on the strength of those decisions.

[6] The “open court principle” strongly militates against the order now requested by Ms To. She commenced a vexatious complaint under the Human Rights Code. When that complaint was dismissed summarily, she sought review in this court. When she was given notice by this court under R.2.1, she was defiant and refused to follow directions from this court. Her application was dismissed as frivolous, vexatious and/or an abuse of process. These findings do not restrict Ms To’s access to the courts or affect her ability to conduct other legal proceedings, but they are available to other parties and other courts, in the reasons from this court, and may form part of a record of litigation misconduct if Ms To engages in vexatious litigation in future.

[7] This court considers it salutary to write and report decisions finding a litigant to have brought proceedings subject to dismissal under R.2.1. Some litigants bring such proceedings serially, and in those cases it may be appropriate for the court to restrict a litigant’s free access to the courts without judicial supervision. The “open court principle”, an important animating principle for the justice system, thus has an obvious animating application in these circumstances.

[8] In respect to the title of proceedings, the short-form endorsement released by this court does not name all of the respondents to the application, as is common practice in this court. The respondents that are named in the title of proceedings are proper respondents to the application: there is no misidentification in the title of proceedings, and the title used properly describes the case. I decline to change it. I have added “et al.” to the list of respondents in the title of proceedings on this endorsement, but not to the official citation name. Our courts abandoned use of “et al.” in short form citations several years ago because of the ubiquity of and negligible additional information conveyed by the expression. The title of proceedings conform to current usage and so will not be changed.

[9] Ms To’s request seems premised on the idea that she, personally, should be shielded from having her identity disclosed. I see no merit to this premise and, indeed, strong policy reasons to the contrary in this case.

D.L. Corbett J.

Date: May 21, 2021