Supreme Court divided over standard of review for arbitrators

A teacher’s union can call witnesses from an in camera school board meeting to testify about a dismissal ruled the Supreme Court of Canada divided by the kind of judicial standard of review that should apply to an arbitrator’s decision.

The ruling opens the door for employees to examine members of a decision-making authority over motives leading to a disciplinary sanction, reaffirms that deference must be shown to arbitrators in order to “preserve the expeditious, effective and specialized dispute settlement method represented by grievance arbitration,” and by the slimmest of margins held that the standard of review applicable to arbitrator’s decisions is not correctness but reasonableness.

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This story was originally published in The Lawyers Weekly.

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