The Canadian Human Rights Act (the “CHRA”) provides a monetary cap of $20,000.00 on the amount of damages the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal may award complainants for each finding of pain and suffering (subs. 53(2)(e)) and reckless or wilful discriminatory practices (subs. 53(3)). The cap has been in place since 1998.
These provisions have been the subject of ongoing scrutiny: in 2000, former Supreme Court of Canada Justice and Chair of the Canadian Human Rights Act Review Panel, Gérard V. La Forest, recommended “the removal of the limits on the amount of compensation that the Tribunal can award for what we would wish to see referred to as injury to ‘dignity, feelings and self-respect’.” Then, in 2022, former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Louise Arbour concluded that “removing the cap on damages would go a long way in increasing access to justice for complainants.”