P.E.I. Human Rights Commission says it has cleared over half its case backlog

The P.E.I. Human Rights Commission says it is slowly working through a years-long backlog of complaints, with just over half of the older cases now resolved.

Brenda Picard, executive director of the commission, said the backlog consisted of 115 complaints submitted before January 2024. So far, 61 of those have been closed, or about 53 per cent.

"In addition, we were able to close almost a quarter of the new files. So files that had come in since January 2024, we closed 18 out of 78 of those files," Picard told CBC's Island Morning.

Her remarks followed a recent complaint to OmbudsPEI, with a complainant alleging there were extended delays and a lack of communication from the P.E.I. Human Rights Commission.

The case was resolved shortly after the ombudsperson's office was drawn in.

The commission having a backlog isn't a new issue.

Back in 2022, the P.E.I. Court of Appeal sounded the alarm that delays in handling complaints were eroding public confidence and the system needed to be repaired. That warning came as the court denied an appeal of a commission decision that had taken four years to resolve.

Extra resources to tackle backlog

Picard said turnaround times for claims will depend on how complex they are, but the commission's goal is to have new files dealt with in two years or less.

She noted that the provincial government provided extra funding last year to help reduce the backlog, and the commission is now tackling the issue from two angles.

"One is trying to put some extra resources on dealing with the backlog, and the other is to actually look at our complaint process and see, okay, how can we improve this for the future, so we don't just keep regenerating the same problem?" she said.

One of the root causes of delays has been staffing and resource constraints. On P.E.I., unlike in many other provinces, the commission's investigators also serve as its lawyers, she said.

"That's unusual. In most other jurisdictions, there are investigators, and then the lawyers only get involved after the investigation is done. So that's one of the things that we're actually exploring now in terms of changing some things on our complaint process."

This year, the commission has experimented with using some external investigators to boost capacity. It has also created a new internal role: a complaints manager.

"She will be doing some investigation, or at least overseeing some of the investigation... taking some of that burden off the lawyers so that they are more able to focus on the decision-making that they need to do, and/or the preparation for other processes that they need to do," said Picard.

The commission hopes the new position will help fix another ongoing issue: lack of communication with complainants.

"We're going to be developing some timelines in terms of, if nothing's happened on your file, or if something has happened, somebody is going to reach out to you within a particular time. So we're just setting those time parameters and seeing what the capacity is to do that."

While Picard said the commission is making progress, she pointed out that the nature of the work makes it challenging for everyone involved.  

"It's very difficult for the staff, the complainants and the respondents. And in our review of our complaint process, we actually did a jurisdictional scan of other jurisdictions that are either similar in size or similar in process to us, and what we found is that everybody was in the same boat."