City of Yellowknife continues court battle over transit fees for disabled

In a Yellowknife courtroom on Tuesday, the city of Yellowknife continued a human rights fight it has, so far, lost every step of the way.

The fight dates back almost five years to a 2014 complaint from a woman who rides a van the city provides to transport people with disabilities.

Elizabeth Portman successfully argued that the city was violating human rights law by charging users of the service a higher fare than it charges people using regular city buses.

On Sept. 22, 2016, Human Rights adjudicator Adrian Wright ordered the city to stop charging higher fares for the service and ordered it to pay Portman $8,518 in damages and reimbursement for the extra fares she paid.

The city paid Portman but did not lower the fares for the van.

Portman, who has multiple sclerosis, went back to the adjudicator to complain that the order was not being followed.

Three days before that complaint was to be heard — and three-and-a-half months after it was ordered to do so — the city finally began charging the same fares for the van as it charges for its regular buses.

The hearing on the city's failure to comply with the order went ahead anyway. Wright ordered the city to pay all users of the van the extra they paid during the time the city had failed to comply with the initial order.

On Tuesday, city lawyers were in court to appeal that order to reimburse passengers who were charged more than regular transit rates during those months.  

Initial decision clear

CBC News asked the city why it took three-and-a-half months to comply with Wright's initial order.

The city did not provide an answer. In an email, Portman said she thinks she knows why: "Sheer arrogance."

Portman estimates the payout would amount to $30 to $40 per passenger in the van during the period, a total of $4,500 to $6,000. The city was unable to say how much it has spent on the case, but it was represented at the human rights hearings and at its appeal in court on Tuesday by labour lawyers from the law firm McLennan Ross LLP.

Portman, who has single-handedly taken on numerous human rights complaints related to the treatment of people with disabilities, did not participate in the appeal. She said the case is too complicated for her to handle on her own and she cannot afford to hire a lawyer. Legal Aid does not provide lawyers for human rights cases.

At Tuesday's appeal hearing, Justice Karen Shaner suggested Wright's initial decision was clear.

"One would think that's a direction to the city to stop engaging in discriminatory fare practice immediately," said the judge.

Marie-Pier Leduc, representing the city, said Wright's order did not say the city had to comply immediately.

Cynthia Levy, the lawyer representing the Human Rights Adjudication Panel, said Wright was simply enforcing his initial order, "which did not give the city a grace period."

She said Wright considered all of the points raised in the appeal before making his enforcement order.

Justice Shaner said she will issue a written decision but, as is the custom of judges, did not say when.