N.S. Court of Appeal dismisses case alleging discrimination

A five year saga over allegations of discrimination is now over after the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal dismissed Tony Smith’s appeal.

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The ruling, released on April 13, 2017, also requires Smith to pay $3,000 to the Capital District Health Authority (CDHA).

Smith was appealing for the court to declare that the CDHA discriminated against him, then retaliated for filing a separate human rights complaint in 1994.

Smith was a former employee of the CDHA. He argued that the CDHA discriminated against him on the basis of race, colour, and physical disability. The Human Rights Board looked at his case in 2012, and released their decision in 2015, that discrimination had not occurred.

It was then that Smith brought the case to the Court of Appeal who heard him in January of this year.

“After 17 days of hearings, and having considered the testimony of 15 witnesses, together with ‘several hundreds if not thousands of pages of documents as exhibits’, it cannot be seriously suggested that the appellant did not have his complaint correctly and fully adjudicated by the board,” reads page 8 of the report by the Court of Appeals.

Smith isn’t happy with the decision, but he isn’t surprised.

“I spoke with my lawyer, there are some options. We’re going to stand back, for a minute,” says Smith, in an interview with Global News Halifax. “One of the most pressings things is this: I make it very clear that I do not trust the system and the Board.”