In York Region District School Board v. Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario, 2024 SCC 22, the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) held that Ontario public school boards are “inherently governmental” for all purposes, and therefore fall within section 32 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (“Charter”). As a result, the Court held that in the circumstances of this case, a principal committed an unreasonable search within the meaning of section 8 of the Charter when he viewed and took pictures of a password-protected private Google-document containing work-related concerns. This was in spite of the fact that the principal found the document open on a teacher’s Board-issued laptop when he pressed on the touchpad.
The grievance did not explicitly allege a Charter violation, and according to the Court majority, the arbitrator did not consider whether the Charter applied. Rather, the arbitrator applied the established arbitral approach of balancing privacy interests in the workplace and dismissed the grievance.
On judicial review, the Divisional Court upheld the arbitrator’s decision as reasonable and found that section 8 does not apply in a workplace context.
The Court of Appeal quashed the arbitral decision and overruled the Divisional Court by holding that the Charter applied and the search was unreasonable under section 8.
The SCC’s majority conducted a correctness analysis and held that section 8 of the Charter applied, and was breached. While the arbitral decision was set aside, it was not remitted, as the issue of discipline was moot.