I no longer consider myself Canadian. I was born in Newfoundland in the late 1960s to a family with deep Indigenous roots. I was raised as a Canadian. I cheered for Canadian teams. I followed Team Canada hockey religiously. I sang the Canadian national anthem with my friends when Ben Johnson won the gold medal in 1988, and was disappointed when he was caught a couple of days later.
I always knew my family was Indigenous. Men in my family were identified with every Indigenous leader or actor on TV. My brother’s favourite hockey player was Reggie Leach; he found representation through Leach. I worked for the federal government in 1987 as a native intern and was never ashamed of being Indigenous. If people did not like it, then tough noogies.
Since I have been involved in the human rights processes in Ontario and Canada, I do not consider myself Canadian. I began using the human rights processes when I had a boss open a weekly meeting with a Stupid Newfie Joke. Fighting the urge to lash out, I told him that it was inappropriate – he said he could do what he wanted. I reminded him later never to do it again, and he began retaliating. When his retaliation finally got to me, he yelled at me that I was not getting my annual bonus as I was going to the bathroom from his office – I reacted.
When I told Horizon’s HR why our relationship had deteriorated and why I was angry, I was told to take a joke. I went to the HRTO as I had no recourse with my employer, to protect my job ideally, and to try to prevent a major career hiccup. But I was not successful. Retaliation following an HRTO filing only increases for the complainant, with no real guardrails to protect those who use what can only be called a false front of Canadian democracy. The Charter is a false promise.
Within 6 months, I decided to quit my job rather than endure increasing retaliation. Presentations to clients for achieving energy efficiency success that I had organized were conducted without my input or participation for the programs I managed. I was employed in name only. I resigned 10 months after the Stupid Newfie joke to try and continue in the industry where I had some success. In 2012, I settled 28 months after the Stupid Newfie Joke, but my contacts in the utility industry dried up.
Horizon, now Alectra, filed an OEB report in October 2011, where they conducted an audit of the provincial programs that I ran and then did not disclose that report to the HRTO before we settled in March 2012. It was an unusual report as audits of provincial programs were led by the province. But constrained by a mandatory NDA in the corporate rights process, I could not discuss my departure from Horizon, and the report in 2011 excluded me from working in the industry since.
When I found the report in November 2017, I filed a breach with the help of the Ontario Human Rights Legal Support Center. I was shocked to find the non-disclosed OEB report issued while we were awaiting the March 2012 hearing I awaited the hearing vs Horizon in 2017, and I believed the false promises of protection from retaliation.
The HRLSC did help me with the Horizon breach case, until a hearing was finally scheduled for the Horizon (now Alectra) breach in 2018. But five minutes after getting a hearing on Horizon, during a settlement conference vs DPCDSB on mascots, that the HRLSC was helping me with, the HRLSC called meattention seeking for being scared to sign another NDA with DPCDSB, as my career was undone by the previous NDA with Horizon. This was September 2018, the peak of the #MeToo movement and the harm of NDAs was being revealed. Worse, once I signed a settlement with DPCDSB on mascots, the HRLSC walked reneged on representing me on the Horizon breach case.
I lost the breach case vs Horizon (Alectra) in January 2019 when the vice chair believed the witness from Alectra that filing a utility-led audit of provincial energy programs was the normal course of business, despite the witness being unable to give a single example of another time when Horizon utilities or other utilities did audits of provincial programs. In fact, even the non-disclosed 2011 OEB report used provincial audits as proof. At this point, the vice chair vouched for the witness’s credibility; she did not have to answer further questions on the report, and the case was lost.
After sharing the result with every remaining contact in the utility industry in 2019, 10 years after the offensive joke and 6 years after last working, I received a message from a former senior OEB manager who handled regulatory filings, that audits of provincial programs were led by the province, not by individual utilities. I filed a retaliation case vs Alectra, of course not represented by the HRLSC, who offered, but trust had been broken in November 2019. During COVID, the retaliation case vs Alectra (Horizon) was thrown out on a 30-day timeline issue imposed after the fact. The issue of the false testimony in the 2019 Alectra (Horizon) breach hearing was never addressed.
So I am going to edit this several times, it is a lot for me. I still have not worked since 2013, save for a brief graduate assistantship at U Windsor, but that is another story. I think I made a mistake getting involved in the Human Rights process. The Charter is a false promise, and I will give more details in the coming weeks.
Here is a submission to the Ontario Ethics Commissioner on the conduct of the HRTO on the Alectra and mascots files. You can read it if you like.
Ethics Commissioner Information Compressed 1
Looking back, I have had a lot of time to reconsider how things would have been different if I had not used the HRTO.
- If I went to Horizon’s HR immediately instead of trying to work it out with my boss, he would have been fired, or I would have quit, and the inconvenience would have been a couple of months pay. I could have shared my story and the damage limited.
- If I broke his jaw with a swift right hook, I would have been charged and been without work for a couple of months. It would have cost me $20000 in lost income and legal fees, and a lifelong 25% -40% reduction in earning potential rather than the 100% imposed.
- Instead, I chose to follow the process, and I lost. I have not had employment since 2013. I have been helpless to help my wife financially as she fought PPMS, and my use of the HRTO experience to fight mascots resulted in increased stress and subjected her to retaliation by her employer, DPCDSB, for my activism. I think I was stupid to trust the government.
Now, we are readying our house for sale and are forced to leave Ontario to seek opportunities elsewhere. I do not regret standing up for being a Newfoundlander and being Indigenous. I do believe that standing up for yourself in Canada is a fool’s errand, and I do not consider myself Canadian any longer.
Worse, with the petty, vindictive and systemically racist behaviour I have seen on the mascot front, I do not think I want to be a Canadian. I believe that no person is better than another because of birthright or ethnicity. I think it is cowardice to punch down on people who are different than you, and even more cowardly to allow others to punch down when you have the power and responsibility to stop it.
