Hurtful words still leading to fines, as Quebec continues fining people who spout off

    Landmark free speech ruling in favour of comedian Mike Ward at the Supreme Court might have some future impact on the landscape of permitted utterances, but government bureaucrats and judges continue to order people fined for expressing themselves in manners deemed unacceptable. 

   Sometimes this makes sense, sometimes less so. 

 Have a look at a summary of  some human rights tribunal judgments from Quebec in 2021 and judge for yourself.  

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Ferdia

 Abdelkader Ferdia, a Muslim who immigrated to Canada in 2013, was working the night shift at Sobey's in Terrebonne in 2018. The job entailed a lot of hard work which made him and other employees sweat and sometimes get a little stinky. His supervisor, Yves Guertin, asked him if he showers during Ramadan, apparently believing that showering might be forbidden to Muslims at that time and that the non-showering might be behind complaints he had apparently received from colleagues about Ferdia's bodily-odours. Guertin fired him sometime later. In January 2021, a judge ordered Guertin and/or his company to pay $1,000 to Ferdia. 

    In the summer of 2016 the Ahuntsic Braves soccer team refused to allow Karine Bellemare to enroll her two daughters Raphaelle and Juliette on the boy's soccer team, instead redirecting her to the girls squad. Bellemare complained of discrimination and asked the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal for $4,500 in compensation. A judge shot down that demand in May. 

   In August 2015 Guy Huard and Francoise Champagne were refused a hotel room at the Wellington Hotel in Sherbrooke because they had a dog. The refusal led to some unpleasantness. The dog appears to have been a guide dog for the handicapped.  Manager Ramezalani Karimi was ordered to pay the couple over $6,500 in compensation. 

 

Derbal

 Lilia Derbal, a Muslim, was working at the Laval Center for Integration and Social Cohesion (CLICS) until she quit in February 2018. She then posted a video on Facebook that caused her former colleague or manager Lero Tchassao to reply in an unhappy way, which we won't repeat here (click the link below if you want to see the nasty comments). Derbal, the court noted, already suffered from such problems as obesity that led her to bariatric surgery. In April a judge ordered him to pay her $7,500. 

   

Barbach

In February lawyer Aya Barbach went to the tribunal because she had yet to receive the $5,000 that a court had previously ordered her former tenant Hevanne Abley to pay her as a consequence of uttering some unkind words.  Abley appears to be black, while Barbach is, well we don't know, but presumably the mean words focused on some ethnicity stuff. The most recent judgment does not specify the precise nature of the initial grievance. 

  In February a judge ordered couple Irina Taranovskaya Tsarevsky and Mikhail Tsarevsky to pay Abderrahim Taoussi $5,000 for refusing to rent them an apartment in their duplex in 2015. The landlady allegedly told the man that she couldn't rent to them because they have children and believed that the noise they make, including an infant crying at night, might cause disturbances. 

 Mohamed Wahid Moustafa, a Canadian of Egyptian origin, was ordered to pay Pascale Nelly Raphaëlle, an immigrant from the Ivory Coast, in March 2021.  The two were friends from school in early 2017 when Yapi lent him a phone temporarily. Five months later she asked for the phone back so she could give it to her mom. Rather than return it, he blocked her on Facebook. She managed to finally get him to meet her to return it but he didn't show up and then told her he couldn't return it for a few more months because he was outta town. She laid a police complaint. He gave the police the phone. But when she received it from police she noticed it was it was an inferior phone. Moustafa said that he acted in good faith because the original phone no longer worked so he replaced it. The two then engaged in unpleasant text exchange which saw Moustafa make negative comments about her mother and skin colour and such things. He told the judge that he started it and asked the tribunal for the same compensation that she was asking from him. The judge was unsympathetic to his claim and ordered him to pay her $6,600. 

      Daniel Pena moved to Canada from El Salvador in 1986 and has three children born here. He was working for the Roofing Warehouse company a few years back when Steve Poirier of Poirier and Sons Roofers, who was dissatisfied about something, told him to "go back to Mexico," etc. In July a tribunal judge ordered Poirier to pay Pena $3,800 in damages. 

 In May a judge ordered Brigitte Leduc to pay Sangeetha Sivanathan $5,000 for refusing to take her child into her daycare. Leduc, in the fall of 2017, explained that she didn't like to take immigrant children because their parents "force" them to adopt different customs. 

In June a judge ordered Serge Robert to pay Marlene Audige $6,000.  Audige, who was and is of Haitian origins, lived - or perhaps still lives -  with her husband on Galt in Vaudruil while Robert lived (and perhaps still does) downstairs in the duplex. Her car was repeatedly vandalized in 2016 and she put alarms and surveillance cameras out. Robert responded by installing fake cameras pointing them at her house and claimed also to have been a victim of vandalism. Tensions rose when her family was eating outdoors in their yard in 2018 when Robert stared at them and laughed derisively. Another time Robert and a friend allegedly yelled "houba houba" at her. She sent them a cease and desist order. She returned home in September 2018 to see her car had been scratched and her fridge had been scratched by someone who had broken in. She said Robet them yelled at her for speaking Haitian creole. "You baboon, learn French," he allegedly said. Robert denied many of the claims before the judge but the judge sided with Audige. 

Samson-Thibault

Sébastien Samson-Thibault sought work as a firefighter in Quebec City, applying for the post in December 2012 but was rejected for being colour blind. In June, nine long years later, a tribunal judge ordered the city to use a different test for future candidates.  The young man eventually achieved his dream of becoming a firefighter nonetheless and now works in Riv du Loup. 

Amélie Houle was fired from her job at a Morin Lake Camping in 2016 because she was forced to use crutches due to a physical disability. In May judge ordered Yanic Lemay and Marie-Ève Savoie to pay her almost $6,600 for the slight. 

Saida Mirouh was awarded $7,500 from the coffers of Johanne Gaudreault, who allegedly mocked her for wearing a Muslim veil in an encounter in a Quebec City parking lot in 2018. "Go back to your country, you have no business here," she allegedly said. 

Pretty Ma, who is of Cambodian origins, sought to open a Thai restaurant in 2016 with his wife. They made an agreement to purchase the Barroso Grill in Lachine. Shareholder Orlando Veri, however, allegedly said that he didn't want Asians to take over the business. Mr. Ma opened a restaurant elsewhere and wasn't much interested in laying a complaint but another shareholder in the Grill - likely irked that the deal fell through on such ridiculous grounds -  told the judge that Veri was clear in his statements about not wanting an Asian to deal with. The court ordered Veri to pay Ma a hefty $11,000. 

 Véronique Bédard-Lafrance was ordered to pay a hefty $15,300 to Mona Amer and her husband Mohamed Kammoun  and their three children after spouting anti-Muslim insults to the family in a Thai Restaurant in St. Foy suburb of Quebec City in September 2018. 

Kin

Yanni Kin, a transgender person from France, born female, now aged 60-something, worked at the Villa Dube Inc. in the remote town of St. Jean de Dieu. The company mailed various work-related stuff to Kin's home. Kin noted that the letters were addressed to Madame Kin. When Kin expressed displeasure, staffer Real McNicoll wrote an insulting letter back. The tribunal ordered McNicoll and/or the company to pay Kin $10,000 plus court expenses. 

Some of these judgements take a while to get settled, man oh man. In January 2013 Gatineau police stopped Serge Calza Nyembwe at a corner store in an incident that led to a lengthy set of court appearances and finally, in January of this year, ended with a judge ordering the police force to compensate him $15,000. 

   In February a\ judge ordered a company called Bursel Inc and/or employee Jean Lauzon to pay a woman of Haitian origins (name withheld in court document) $5,000 for workplace sexual comments before firing her in May 2016.  Lawyer Julius Grey represented the plaintiff in the court case.     

   In July 2017 Anjou's Heifa Ferjani, who moved to Canada from Tunisia in 2017,was outside  when a border collie dog raced towards her and her husband and two daughters. The owner came out and the two parties had an altercation which allegedly led dog owner Sarah Tremblay to make disparaging comments about immigrants and Arabs and such stuff. The woman asked a court to force Tremblay to pay her $7,500 in compensation. The judge rejected the demand.