Canada's prison system has been ordered to pay an employee $310,000 in damages for malicious mistreatment..Management peddled gossip and slander in falsely accusing a British Columbia guard of smuggling drugs, wrote a labour board arbitrator..“The employer either fabricated the false allegation itself or, as it claimed, simply brought false gossip before the board,” wrote Bryan Gray, arbitrator with the Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board. Damages included compensation for the firing of the guard..According to Blacklock's Reporter, Louise Lyons of Chilliwack, BC was named as a drug courier by a jailhouse informant at the Kent penitentiary at Agassiz, BC. Lyons had a spotless 16-year record. Managers had no proof of wrongdoing, the board said..But records showed managers put Lyons under surveillance in an attempt to find incriminating evidence. She was criticized for standing in a “suspicious manner” outside a prisoner’s cell..“The employer brought virtually no evidence forward at the hearing pertaining to these very serious allegations made by the informant,” wrote arbitrator Gray. “It became clear the employer acted on these allegations without ever having presented them fully to the grievor.”.Lyons was then fired. She testified she was unable to find work outside janitorial duties, lost her home and car, came under a psychiatrist’s care, was subject to cruel gossip and resorted to using a local food bank. Lyons testified she “just about tried to commit suicide.".“Her co-workers heard and believed that she was fired for being a drug mule who smuggled fentanyl and other contraband into Kent on behalf of organized crime,” wrote Gray..The board ruled the slander was compounded when lawyers for the Correctional Service attending a hearing on the case repeated gossip that Lyons was a heavy drug user — a “brazen act of bringing a false, harmful allegation completely unsupported by any evidence,” it said..“The employer’s conduct through the unfortunately lengthy saga from 2016 to 2020 was malicious, reprehensible, deliberate and shameful in its relentless efforts to harm her,” wrote the arbitrator. Misconduct included “tawdry allegations about her personal life,” he added..“No hearing before this board should ever again be presented with false and extremely prejudicial information, possibly fabricated by the employer and intended to obstruct the administration of justice in a grievance adjudication,” said the board..“The deliberate act of the employer of bringing such false information to the board is highly offensive to any reasonable sense of justice and decency.”
