Nor does it matter that the now 50-year-old mother of three wasn’t fired because of that addiction, which she never revealed to her employer over the two years during which she clandestinely scooped drugs at every opportunity. D.S. was terminated, rather, for cause — theft of drugs and gross misconduct relating to protocols.
But no, that would make too much sense. The independent arbitrator ruled instead that the facility discriminated against the woman because her addiction caused her nefarious conduct. And addiction, classified as mental illness under the definition adopted by the Ontario Human Rights Code, is subject to statutory provisions: “Every person has a right to equal treatment with respect to employment without discrimination because of … disability.”
The employer had a duty of care to the disgraced drug-addled nurse, even though they were unaware of the addiction.
What of the duty of care to the patients, those in the 54 beds for which she was responsible?
It should be noted that the resident care manager testified she had “lost all trust” in the complainant and felt that she could not expose the residents to the “attendant risks” of D.S. being restored to her job, as did the woman’s supervisor.
The nurses’ union, the human rights advocates and the arbitrator are all in accord: D.S. was unfairly treated and must be accommodated.
We’ve seen where flagrant abuse of patients by a drug-addicted nurse has led before — Elizabeth Wettlaufer, who pleaded guilty to eight counts of murder, four counts of attempted murder and two counts of aggravated assault against patients at long-term care homes and private residences in Ontario. Wettlaufer had a long record of shabby work, was disciplined on multiple occasions and was once fired for stealing drugs from a hospital and ingesting them.
And you thought only doctors are treated like gods.
Don’t get old. Don’t get sick. Don’t assume the professional rectitude of health-care practitioners. And definitely don’t put your faith in the rational judgment of arbitrators.
At the opposite end of the sanity spectrum, a tip of the hat to ofttimes excoriated refugee officials.
I give you Arash Ghulam Abbas, son of an Afghan politician, who arrived in Canada, via Russia and the U.S., and made a refugee claim on May 18, 2016.
Before washing up on our shores, Abbas allegedly ran a prostitution ring south of the border. He was charged, in both Maryland and Virginia, with human trafficking and prostitution. Some of the females — this from media reports — were minors. Several claimed they’d answered an ad in Craigslist, were wooed into the business, in New York City, and their passports then withheld.
In a separate police investigation, it was alleged that Abbas was the big cheese in an organization that recruited adult women, booking them into high-end rooms with clients across the entire country.
“Abbas frequently recruited girls who had problems with immigration and other issues, including the hoarding of their passports,” a Maryland detective told reporters at the time of his 2009 arrest.
For reasons never publicly disclosed — although it was alleged political pressure had been brought to bear because of Abbas’ father’s status — the Virginia charges were dismissed a year later and the Maryland charges voluntarily withdrawn.
Up here, eight years later, the Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration apparently became aware of Abbas’ refugee claim, notifying the Refugee Protection Division (RPD) their lawyers intended to intervene in the refugee hearing. The ministry took the view that, under the United Nations Convention related to the Status of Refugees, Abbas should not be excluded from applying for refugee protection based on the charges that had disappeared in the U.S.
The RPD disagreed — bully for them — finding that Abbas’ “criminality (if committed) in the U.S. constitutes multiple serious non-political crimes.” Based on the hearing, they did not find Abbas “to be a credible or reliable witness.”
From their ruling: “Simply put, the Board finds there is enough credible and trustworthy evidence to demonstrate that there is serious reason for considering that the claimant committed the said crimes.”
The evidentiary standard for the Board is below that required in civil law (on the balance of probabilities) and in criminal law (beyond a reasonable doubt).
At his hearing, Abbas claimed that American investigators had coerced the alleged victims into victims into making statements against him as part of plea bargains and that one of the detectives had a personal axe to grind because he, Abbas, had been in a romantic relationship with his stepdaughter and she wanted to marry him.
If Abbas had been charged with the same human trafficking offences in Canada, and convicted, he could have faced up to 10 years in prison.
Yet the Immigration Ministry was agreeable to having him here, an alleged pimp, as if we didn’t have enough sleazebags of our own, under refugee protections. The RPD was not.
Their decision was brought to Federal Court for judicial review by Justice Henry Brown.
In his review of the material, Brown pointed out that Abbas’ own testimony corroborated many aspects of the U.S. police reports. “For example, the Applicant knew relevant women were prostitutes, he drove a prostitute around and waited outside places she went, he knew of the website used to link the prostitutes to customers, and he knew how the prostitution ring operated. He testified he was not the ringleader and instead pointed to one of the prostitutes he knew.”
Early this month, noting that the RPD is not bound to “accept the position of the Minister,” Brown upheld the RPD decision.
“It correctly and reasonably assesses the seriousness of the non-political crimes at issue. Standing back and assessing the RPD’s decision as a whole, it exhibits justification, transparency and intelligibility within its decision-making process.”
Hallelujah. Sanity prevails.
Rosie DiManno is a columnist based in Toronto covering sports and current affairs. Follow her on Twitter: @rdimanno