Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Characterization of the 2021–2022 working relationship and whether an enforceable employment contract with defined remuneration existed
• Adequacy and reliability of Ms. Gordon’s after-the-fact activity reports as proof of hours worked and quantum of unpaid wages
• Impact of Ms. Gordon’s failure to submit contemporaneous reports, invoices, or payment requests despite prior knowledge that such reports were required for remuneration
• Effect of emails in which Ms. Gordon resigned without quantifying or expressly asserting a salary claim for 2021–2022 on whether she waived further remuneration
• The burden of proof on the claimant to establish both the existence and amount of any debt, including proof of employee status versus self-employment
• Limits on the court’s power to retroactively impose salary terms, overtime and dual compensation that were never agreed to, particularly given the non-profit’s known financial constraints

Background and parties

Valerie Gordon brought a claim before the Court of Québec against the Quebec Board of Black Educators Inc. (QBBE), seeking $62,400.50 in alleged unpaid wages for the period of January 1, 2021 to April 30, 2022. The claimed sum represented what she said remained owing on a total of $83,062.50, after crediting $20,662 that she had already received from QBBE over 2021 and 2022. The matter proceeded by default against the Board, which did not have legal counsel at trial after several attorneys withdrew from the file. Despite the default posture, the court still required Ms. Gordon to prove the factual and legal basis for her claim and the amount allegedly owed.

Initial engagement and established compensation terms

Ms. Gordon first worked with QBBE from August 25 to December 31, 2020 as Outreach Coordinator, at an agreed salary of $25 per hour for a 35-hour workweek, with overtime not paid in money but recoverable only as time off. During that first contract, additional Deliverables Analyst duties were added and the parties agreed to a lump-sum supplement of $1,000 per month. Under this arrangement, payment depended on Ms. Gordon submitting activity reports to QBBE’s president, Alix Adrien, for approval. All amounts for the 2020 term were paid and were not in dispute. However, this initial period, with its clearly defined hourly rate, lump-sum component, and requirement for activity reports, became the benchmark against which Ms. Gordon later tried to measure her entitlement for 2021–2022.

Second engagement and absence of clear remuneration terms

When the 2020 contract ended, QBBE offered Ms. Gordon a new role as Program Development Officer to replace a departing employee. Mr. Adrien told her that the predecessor had earned $40 per hour and indicated that, in light of QBBE’s precarious finances, her own remuneration would need to be discussed and agreed. He also explained that the Board did not have the means to pay her immediately but would seek the funds necessary to compensate her. Confident that the organization would keep its word, Ms. Gordon accepted the position without any concrete remuneration terms—no agreed hourly rate, no confirmation of a lump-sum component, and no written or oral commitment on overtime. She then worked without pay from January 1 to August 12, 2021, at which point she received a first partial payment of $7,000, followed by $5,600 on September 4, 2021 and $2,062 on October 4, 2021. In 2022 she received two additional payments of $3,000 each, on March 15 and June 13. These five payments totaled $20,662. The amounts bore no clear relation to a defined salary structure or to specific hours worked, and Ms. Gordon testified that she was not given any explanation of how the figures were calculated and did not request one.

Resignations, communications and the question of waiver

On December 2, 2021, Ms. Gordon emailed QBBE to resign immediately, citing “increasingly troubling issues and development” affecting the programs and office functioning, but she made no mention of unpaid wages or any outstanding balance for 2021. Instead, she emphasized that her experience working with the president had been “nothing short of outstanding.” In response, Mr. Adrien refused to accept her resignation before speaking with her and reiterated that moving on without her was not an option, underscoring the value he placed on her work. After a meeting whose content remains unknown to the court, Ms. Gordon agreed to continue working. The court inferred that, had amounts allegedly owed been raised at that meeting, Ms. Gordon would have said so in testimony; her silence on this point suggested the issue had not been discussed. On May 2, 2022, she resigned again, this time explicitly linking her departure to not being paid and stressing that she could no longer continue in a situation of irregular or withheld salary and mounting debt. She referred generally to “debt for my salary” and the unsustainability of the arrangement but did not specify the number of hours worked, the rate of pay, or an exact amount claimed. In his reply, Mr. Adrien expressed regret, referenced an upcoming transfer from the English Montreal School Board, and stated his intention to “settle” with Ms. Gordon and two colleagues while prioritizing another individual to protect the organization’s reputation. He acknowledged the many months she had worked without a constant salary, indicated that QBBE was “indebted” to her, and stated that he expected to pay her some back salary by the end of that week. Subsequently, a payment of $3,000 was made on June 13, 2022. However, the parties did not document what portion of any subsidy was earmarked for Ms. Gordon, how her share was calculated, or what balance, if any, remained. The court noted that Ms. Gordon did not produce the cheque or any notation indicating whether it was a partial or final payment.

The evolving claim and reconstructed activity reports

In a formal demand letter dated September 12, 2022, Ms. Gordon claimed a balance of $51,338. For 2020 she noted that the combined Outreach/Deliverables Analyst appointment from August 25 to December 31, 2020, at $4,500 per month, had been fully paid. For the second appointment—described as Program Director responsible for program development and grant writing—from January 1, 2021 to April 2022, she applied the same $4,500 per month over 16 months, for a total of $72,000, less the $20,662 already received, to reach the claimed balance. Built into this figure was an assumption of the same dual compensation model as in 2020: an hourly component (calculated by her at $25 per hour) and a monthly lump sum of $1,000. Yet, no such structure had been agreed for the second term. In her Originating Application, Ms. Gordon increased her total claimed compensation for January 1, 2021 to April 30, 2022 to $83,062.50, asserting that she had worked 2,682.5 hours at $25 per hour for a total wage claim of $67,062.50 plus an additional $16,000 in lump-sum amounts. This figure was $11,062.50 higher than the sum stated in the demand letter, and she did not explain the discrepancy. She also did not clearly disclose that she was now effectively seeking payment for overtime. Drawing on her post-facto activity reports, which reflected an average of approximately 39 hours per week, the court inferred she was including overtime hours and thereby seeking more generous conditions than under the 2020 contract, where overtime had not been paid.

Court’s reconstruction of possible entitlement and credibility concerns

To test Ms. Gordon’s position, the court carried out its own calculations, assuming—purely hypothetically—that she would have had the same terms as in 2020: a 35-hour week at $25 per hour plus a $1,000 monthly lump sum, with no overtime pay. On that basis, the court calculated total gross compensation of $76,375 for the period from January 1, 2021 to April 30, 2022, lower than the amount Ms. Gordon had claimed in her court filing but higher than the base wage component in her demand letter. Even under this generous assumption, the court emphasized that no agreement to pay overtime or continue the dual compensation structure had been made. Moreover, Ms. Gordon had not shown why she would be entitled to both hourly overtime and the $1,000 monthly lump sum for the second term. The court expressed skepticism about the reliability of the activity reports Ms. Gordon prepared several years after the work ended. The reports listed weekly hours down to the nearest half-hour over a 69-week period and were used only to support litigation, not to claim payment contemporaneously. Given that Ms. Gordon had previously been required to submit activity reports to be paid under the 2020 agreement, the court queried why she had neither continued this practice nor provided any regular timesheets, invoices, or balances owed while working under the second arrangement.

Risk assumption, negligence and burden of proof

The court found that Ms. Gordon knowingly took on significant risk by continuing to work for a non-profit in acknowledged financial difficulty without a defined employment contract, clear remuneration terms, or consistent documentation of her work. She was aware that salary or consulting fees depended on future grant monies, that such funding might not materialize, and that QBBE lacked the means to pay her in real time. Yet she did not insist on an agreed hourly rate, did not track and communicate unpaid hours and balances at regular intervals, and did not secure periodic approvals of the amounts she believed to be owing. The court viewed this as negligent conduct in managing her own financial interests. Her failure to mention any sum outstanding when she first resigned in December 2021, and again in May 2022 when she left for good, was taken as a strong indication that she had, in effect, waived any claim to remuneration beyond what she had actually received. The court also noted that QBBE had characterized her in its defence as self-employed under a sole proprietorship called Alternative Development Solution and that Ms. Gordon did not squarely address this allegation, leaving the nature of the relationship (employee versus consultant) uncertain. She produced neither T4 nor Relevé 1 slips nor tax returns to substantiate her assertion that she had been QBBE’s employee. Under Quebec civil law, the burden rests on the claimant to establish the facts giving rise to a right, including the existence of an enforceable obligation and the quantum of any debt. The court concluded that Ms. Gordon had not met this burden.

Limits on judicial intervention and final outcome

The court stressed that it could not retroactively create or impose salary terms that exceeded those which had been clearly agreed in 2020, such as a dual hourly and lump-sum structure with overtime pay, particularly given that these conditions were never offered to Ms. Gordon for the later period and that QBBE evidently lacked the financial capacity. Nor could the court simply transpose the previous contract’s terms to the 2021–2022 period in the absence of consent. The post-hoc activity reports, drafted only for litigation and not used contemporaneously for payment, could not serve as a sufficient foundation to impose the generous compensation package Ms. Gordon now sought. Ultimately, the Court of Québec dismissed Ms. Gordon’s Originating Application in its entirety. The successful party was therefore the defendant, the Quebec Board of Black Educators Inc. The court also declined to award legal costs against Ms. Gordon, recognizing that the Board had benefited from her services at relatively low cost; accordingly, there was no monetary award, damages, or costs ordered in favour of QBBE, and the total amount granted in favour of the successful party was $0.