Торонто отказал в иске о дискриминации из-за отсутствия доказательств предвзятости

Facts versus assumptions highlighted in Ontario human rights decision A woman who believed she was denied a promotion, then replaced by another individual because of her race and sex, has lost out on an application of discrimination, after a tribunal ruled that a strongly held belief, on its own, is not evidence that bias occurred. The worker had spent nearly three years at Calian Group, where her pay climbed from $80,000 to $91,800, a 14.75-per-cent increase, with nine per cent in bonus payments, before she resigned in November 2019 to take a higher-paying job at another firm. The worker, who self-identifies as a Black woman, said she had been passed over for the role of senior project manager and the larger pay increases that came with it. After giving notice, she floated a proposal to stay on if she was promoted to senior project manager with a 25-per-cent raise. The company did not accept it, and her resignation took effect in December 2019. Once she left, the employer brought in an external candidate to fill the role, a white man she believed had been handed the position, title and salary she had wanted. In her view, he was less qualified. Discrimination allegations Her application, filed in November 2020, raised three allegations of discrimination based on race, colour, ethnic origin and sex: that she was denied the promotion, that the company refused her offer to stay, and that it treated her replacement more favourably. She believed the man hired after her departure could not match her engineering review work because he lacked her level of education. She acknowledged, though, that he held an undergraduate degree in project management, a diploma in computer engineering, a project management certification, and 15 years of relevant experience. Pressed for specifics, she conceded she had no knowledge that her replacement was paid more than she had been, no knowledge of his work history, and no knowledge that he lacked experience yet was treated better in hiring. No one, she also said, had ever made a comment about her race, colour, ethnic origin or sex. Assumptions of unfairness The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario dismissed the application on June 26, 2026, in a decision by vice-chair Joseph Tascona. Tascona explained that a summary hearing tests whether a claim has any reasonable prospect of success, and that the tribunal assumes an applicant's account of events is true. That assumption, he said, does not extend to an applicant's conclusions about why the treatment happened. As he put it, "accepting the facts alleged by the applicant does not include accepting the applicant's assumptions about why she was treated unfairly." The tribunal has no authority over general complaints of unfairness that are not tied to the Code, he noted. Tascona found that the worker's complaints centred on management decisions that she viewed as unfair, but that she had not connected any of them to a protected ground, and she could point to no evidence, beyond her own suspicion, to make that link. The application was dismissed. "The applicant's allegations of discrimination are based on unsupported suspicion and speculation, and as a result, the application does not have a reasonable prospect of success," Tascona wrote.