Bell Canada Decisions
   
Last year's Legal Report included discussion of two applications brought by Bell Canada that challenged interlocutory rulings of the Tribunal made during the course of hearings on a pay equity dispute.¹⁸⁷ Both applications were rejected by the Federal Court but subsequently appealed. Regarding the application relevant to the admissibility or compellability of evidence, the Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed Bell Canada's appeal.¹⁸⁸ The Court endorsed the principle that rulings on evidentiary matters should not be the subject of court applications until the Human Rights Tribunal has completed its proceedings. It stressed that this principle is Abased on the fact that the parties cannot know until the end of the proceeding whether a review of a particular interlocutory decision will be necessary; and on the fact that the inconvenience of the delay involved far outweighs any value in an early review.@¹⁸⁹ 

With respect to the second application, the Court of Appeal noted that the applicant based its argument on subsection 40(1) of the CHRA, which authorizes Aan individual or group of individuals@ to file a complaint with the Commission. However, the issue of whether a union had standing to file a complaint had been previously raised by Bell in the same case but on a different application. This had occurred in 1996 on an application for certiorari and prohibition which sought to prevent the referral of the complaints to adjudication. At that time Bell had relied on subsection 40(2) in support of its position, a fact that was specifically noted by the Federal Court in denying the application. Having regard to the procedural history of the complaint, the Court of Appeal took the view that it Ais an abuse of process for Bell to advance now in a further interlocutory proceeding a new challenge to status based on a ground it could have invoked in the earlier proceedings. It is possible that this issue could be raised in judicial review proceedings after the panel has made its final decision, although the argument of res judicata may well be raised at that time and the Court will have to deal with the whole issue then.@¹⁹⁰ Bell=s appeal was therefore dismissed.

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