View cases - Stewart McKelvey

37under an obligation to offer “accommodation” to the Complainant or that the CHRA applied to hersituation. CN’s position was that the Complainant had to make a choice between her job and herfamily situation and that was that. Mr. Kerry Morris, CN’s Labour Relation Manager, testified thathe “did not see family status as an accommodation issue”. His comprehension of what theComplainant was seeking, although he had never spoken to her, was an extension of the time shehad to report in order to “make childcare arrangements”. He felt that CN had given her significanttime to make the necessary arrangements.[129] For his part, Mr. Torchia testified that “the request that came to me [he did not indicatefrom whom the request came] was that they [the Complainant, CW and CR] needed more time tosort out their affairs. It was child care issues and they needed more time. I granted the request. Inmy mind I was accommodating them by giving them more time. I didn’t think that wasunreasonable what I was doing. They had been off for a period of time, not like somebody whowas set up, laid off, set up, laid off that would be expecting to go to work. They were off for aconsiderable period of time. So therefore they weren’t probably expecting this at that point in timeand giving them extra time to do that seemed reasonable in my mind.” He added that he knewthat there “was parental obligations of some sort” and he understood that the Complainant“needed some time to make arrangements”, but added that this did not raise in his mind any issueregarding the CHRA.2010 CHRT 23 (CanLII)[130] Both the testimony of the Complainant and of CN’s witnesses establishes, without adoubt, that CN did not apply its accommodation policy in the Complainant’s case. The evidencealso demonstrates that other employees who needed accommodation for reasons that could alsobring them under the purview of the CHRA and CN’s accommodation policy and who did notreport to Vancouver or did not report immediately, were not terminated by CN. For example,employees U and E, whose parents were ill, were both given leave of absence on compassionateground and were not ordered to report to Vancouver. Also, other employees whose situationswere not explained at the hearing were either given leave of absences or were set up by theirsupervisors and did not have to report to cover the shortage.