College spent $618,433 on sisters’ case

Yukon College has spent nearly a million dollars on human rights complaints between 2002 and 2011.

Yukon College has spent nearly a million dollars on human rights complaints between 2002 and 2011.

That includes spending $618,433.44 on the case involving twin sisters Sarah Baker and Susan Malcolm.

In that case, the college was eventually ordered to pay the women $50,000 late last year.

The college released the information via press release today.

It did so months after the Star filed an official request for the information under the territory’s Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (ATIPP) in October 2011.

The request was initially refused on the grounds that the information was covered under lawyer/client privilege.

The Star appealed the decision and was expecting to hear an official response soon.

Malcolm and Baker were registered in the college’s community support worker program in 2004.

The pair filed a formal human rights complaint, claiming they had been harassed and discriminated against by two of their instructors.

The sisters, now both in their 60s, said the instructors drove them to quit the program after they told the siblings they smelled, and were not physically fit enough.

They say they were also repeatedly told they wouldn’t be successful if they continued in the program on the full-time basis.

The complaint was referred to a Yukon human rights board of adjudication in February 2007.

After years of meetings and hearings, the commission found that the college did not discriminate against the twins on the basis of their age nor family status.

However, the pair was discriminated against and harassed on the “basis of physical and cognitive disability or perception thereof,” adjudicator Barb Evans said in her decision dated May 2011.

The college then appealed the decision, claiming Evans’ ruling was invalid since her term as an adjudicator had ended in December 2010.

The Yukon Supreme Court denied the appeal.

In the end, the college was ordered to pay the sisters $10,000 each for the damage to their dignity and $30,000 to help cover legal costs.

From 2002 to 2011, an additional $380,348.22 was spent on other cases unrelated to the Malcolm and Baker case, the college said.

College president Karen Barnes said today there have been two other human rights cases involving the college since 2002.

Both were settled, but Barnes, who succeeded Terry Weninger as president last fall, said she doesn’t have any more details on the cases.

One of those cases was likely Farley Hayes, who settled a four-year battle with the college out of court in 2009.

Hayes, who was in the midst of a liver transplant, had been absent from work for two years. The college – acting on advice from its insurance company – decided it was time to cut the computer technician loose.

It did so with limit medical evidence, a human rights board found.

In total, the cost for defence and settlements in human rights cases involving the college was $998,781.66 over the 10-year period.

“I think no one likes to be involved in litigation; it’s a costly process and everybody knows that; it is unfortunately part of doing business these days,” Barnes told the Star.

“I think human rights is a good thing in general, that we have a system in place to protect people.

“The college did, I think, the right thing; we defended instructors who were doing the best they could at their jobs and defending our students’ right to success.”

Barnes said the college has developed a number of policies for dealing with human rights complaints.

In the Malcolm and Baker case, about half of the $600,000 was spent on representation at a nearly 30-day hearing into the case in 2008, Barnes said.

The college’s board approves the budget every year and there is always money included to cover legal expenses, she added.

Usually the college allots between $40,000 and $60,000 a year to cover legal costs as part of its annual administrative budget.

“Fortunately, the college has always maintained a reserve fund for contingency, which is a good practice, and most colleges do it,” Barnes said.

“We were able to dip into that reserve to pay for those legal costs during those high-cost years.”

The college has since been able to replenish most of those reserves, she said.

The reserve fund is about 10 per cent of its annual operating budget of approximately $19 million.

The chair of the college’s board of governors says he supports the decisions of previous college administration and board members to challenge the Malcolm and Baker case.

“For many years, as a board of governors of the college, we felt it important to support our staff, and go the distance to protect people’s professional and personal reputations,” Paul Flaherty said in the release.

“We stand by the decisions made by previous administrations of the college in this case.”

The Star had yet to receive the official documents it requested as of early this afternoon.