Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Judicial review focused on whether a labour arbitrator’s interpretation of clause 279.4 of the collective agreement on variable remuneration was “reasonable” under the Vavilov framework, not whether it was correct.
• Central interpretive dispute concerned the meaning of “masse salariale […] dégagée par les juristes au 31 décembre” and whether it referred to a year-long payroll mass or a “snapshot” of jurists on payroll on 31 December only.
• Evidence from the Treasury Board’s professional relations adviser on the employer’s internal calculation method was weighed but ultimately rejected as inconsistent with the clear wording and purpose of clause 279.4.
• Competing definitions of “masse salariale” and “traitement” were assessed in light of labour-law practice, arbitral jurisprudence and commentary (Morin & Blouin), leading the arbitrator to favour an annual, not one-day, conception of payroll mass.
• The Commissioner’s affidavits attempting to re-characterize the arbitration record were discounted; the reviewing court confined itself to the facts and reasoning set out in the arbitrator’s written award.
• Alleged “absurdity” in the arbitrator’s reading (because it allowed prorated inclusion of jurists who worked only part of the year) was treated as mere disagreement with an interpretation that fell comfortably within the range of reasonable outcomes.

Factual background

Me Josée Lapalme is a public-sector lawyer who had long been employed in the Québec public service and who joined the office of the Commissaire à la lutte contre la corruption (the Commissioner) on 14 February 2022. Soon after her arrival, the Commissioner’s legal function was being structured, and her role evolved into a coordination-type position. From April 2022, with the hiring of two new legal advisers, her mandate crystallized into deploying a legal affairs division, designing and implementing a regrouped legal service offering, developing processes and tools, and coordinating the division’s work. These tasks were characterized as “mandats spéciaux” – special mandates that went beyond ordinary duties. The collective agreement governing public-sector lawyers and notaries (the Convention collective des avocats et notaires 2015–2023) contained a scheme of “rémunération variable” – additional remuneration for special mandates – in clause 279.4, potentially ranging from 3% to 10% of a jurist’s base salary. Convinced that her enhanced responsibilities met this definition, Lapalme, supported by her immediate superior, sought the additional remuneration for the 2022–2023 reference period. Their attempts to secure this pay through internal channels were unsuccessful. In October 2023, Human Resources formally refused the request, stating that no jurists were in post at the Commissioner’s office on 31 December 2021, so there was no “masse salariale” that could be used to fund variable remuneration for the subsequent period. On 16 November 2023, within the contractual grievance delay, Lapalme’s union, Les avocats et notaires de l’État québécois (LANEQ), filed a grievance challenging the refusal.

The grievance and the arbitrator’s decision

LANEQ advanced the grievance before arbitrator Me Claire Brassard. The union’s core position was that clause 279.4 required the employer to look at the mass of salaries “dégagée par les juristes au 31 décembre” of the year preceding the reference period, and that this phrase should be read in line with labour-law usage as encompassing all remuneration paid during the year, not a single-day snapshot. The Commissioner, by contrast, relied heavily on the testimony of a Treasury Board professional relations adviser. She described the employer’s internal practice: the “dégagement” (payroll mass available to fund variable remuneration) was treated as a “photo” of the payroll on 31 December of the preceding year, so if no jurist appeared on that date, there was no mass and therefore no capacity to pay any variable remuneration in the next period. Because no jurist, including Lapalme, was on the Commissioner’s payroll on 31 December 2021, the employer argued there was simply no “masse salariale dégagée” for the 2022–2023 reference period, regardless of the work actually performed by jurists during that later year. Arbitrator Brassard rejected this approach as a “dérive interprétative” that produced absurd results. She reasoned that the wording of clause 279.4 speaks of the mass of salaries “dégagée par les juristes au 31 décembre” and not “le 31 décembre”, and that the ordinary and labour-law meaning of “masse salariale” is the total of salaries paid over the course of the year, not an amount tied to a single calendar day. On that basis, she held that the payroll mass must be calculated over the entire year preceding the reference period (in this case, 1 January to 31 December 2021), using the formula 1.82% of the “traitement” (salary) of jurists, excluding premiums and overtime. In support, she drew on Morin & Blouin’s arbitration treatise to apply the first rule of collective agreement interpretation: when the wording is clear and unambiguous, the arbitrator gives effect to it without recourse to extrinsic aids such as past practice. She also cited arbitral decisions such as Alliance du personnel professionnel et technique de la santé et des services sociaux (APTS) c. CIUSSS du Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, where “masse salariale” had been defined as the sum of salaries and related items paid over the previous financial year, and Association des juristes de l’État c. Agence du revenu du Québec, in which the mass of salaries “dégagée […] au 31 décembre” was likewise treated as a year-long aggregate and not a one-day payroll snapshot. Having found the clause clear, she declined to embark on a second-stage inquiry into the parties’ common intention (as described by the Supreme Court in Uniprix) and instead applied the literal, juridically coherent meaning of the text. The arbitrator concluded that the Commissioner was obliged to calculate the relevant payroll mass as of 31 December 2021 in accordance with this interpretation and to pay Lapalme the applicable additional remuneration for her special mandates.

The judicial review: legal framework

Unhappy with the outcome, the Commissioner brought an application for judicial review (pourvoi en contrôle judiciaire) before the Québec Superior Court, seeking to have the arbitral award of 9 May 2025 quashed as unreasonable. Both parties agreed that the applicable standard of review was reasonableness under the Supreme Court’s decision in Canada (Ministre de la Citoyenneté et de l’Immigration) v. Vavilov. The Court confirmed this: no issue raised fell within the narrow categories attracting correctness, such as constitutional questions or general questions of central importance to the legal system. Under Vavilov, a reviewing court asks whether the administrative decision, taken as a whole, reflects an internally coherent chain of reasoning and is justified in light of the legal and factual constraints bearing on the decision-maker. The role of the Superior Court is not to rehear the case as an appeal or de novo tribunal, but to ensure that the decision falls within the range of reasonable outcomes open to the arbitrator, given the statutory and contractual context, the evidentiary record, and the applicable interpretive principles. This approach is deferential and respects the legislature’s choice to entrust certain matters—such as collective agreement interpretation and the application of specialized labour-law norms—to arbitrators rather than courts.

The Commissioner’s arguments on review

On review, the Commissioner attacked the arbitral award on two main fronts. First, it contended that the arbitrator’s understanding of “masse salariale dégagée par les juristes au 31 décembre” was contrary to the “definition” embedded in clause 279.4 itself and inconsistent with the way the collective agreement uses the defined term “traitement” (annual salary). The employer argued that the parties had already negotiated a self-contained concept of payroll mass for this specific purpose, tied tightly to the notion of salary on a given date, and that the arbitrator improperly “imported” an external definition from one arbitral award (the APTS decision) and generalized labour-law usage. Second, the Commissioner criticized what it called the arbitrator’s “literal” reading of “au 31 décembre”, asserting that this failed to account for the broader context and for uncontested evidence concerning the Treasury Board’s budgeting and calculation practices. In its view, the arbitrator had effectively rewritten the collective agreement by substituting a different formula—1.82% times all remuneration paid during the year—for the formula actually negotiated, which the employer saw as 1.82% times the annual “traitement” of jurists present on the payroll on 31 December. The Commissioner portrayed the consequences of the arbitrator’s approach as absurd, because it allowed pro-rata inclusion of jurists who worked only a portion of the year, allegedly out of step with a concept defined by annual salary scales in the agreement and its schedules. The employer also filed affidavits summarizing the evidence allegedly adduced at arbitration, attempting to influence how the reviewing court would understand the factual background and contextual interpretation.

The court’s assessment of the arbitral reasoning

The Superior Court began by delimiting the factual basis for its review. It declined to rely on the Commissioner’s post-hoc affidavit “summaries” of the arbitral evidence, holding that the relevant facts were those contained in the arbitrator’s written reasons and the record as she presented it. Within that frame, the Court examined the arbitrator’s treatment of the text of clause 279.4, the purpose of variable remuneration for special mandates, and the supporting jurisprudence and doctrinal authorities. It noted that the arbitrator had clearly identified the applicable contractual provisions (clauses 279.4 and 279.5), set out the undisputed factual context of Lapalme’s special mandates and the refusal grounded on the absence of jurists on 31 December 2021, and then articulated why she found the clause to be clear and unambiguous. Her analysis of “au 31 décembre” as referring to the payroll mass generated by jurists during the year, rather than a single-day headcount, was anchored both in the actual wording of the clause and in how labour-law practice typically conceives of “masse salariale”. She reinforced this by reference to arbitral and doctrinal sources, but used those authorities in a way that was consistent with, and did not contradict, the text of the collective agreement. The Court held that it was not unreasonable for the arbitrator to treat the clause as clear enough to apply at face value without resort to negotiations history, past practice, or the employer’s internal “photo” method. Applying Vavilov, the Court emphasized that its task was not to decide whether it would have interpreted the clause the same way, but to determine whether the arbitrator’s reasons were sufficiently justified, transparent, and intelligible and whether the outcome lay within the range of acceptable solutions open to her. It found no “decisive flaw” in the logic of her reasoning, no failure to engage with key contextual elements, and no omission that would cause the reviewing court to lose confidence in the result. The employer’s submissions were characterized as disagreement with the arbitrator’s interpretive choice, bordering on an appellate challenge on correctness, which is not the role of judicial review in this context.

Outcome and consequences

In the end, the Superior Court concluded that the arbitral award met the standard of reasonableness in both its reasoning and its result. The arbitrator had properly identified and applied the governing interpretive principles for collective agreements, anchored her reading of “masse salariale dégagée par les juristes au 31 décembre” in the text and context of clause 279.4, and reasonably preferred a year-long conception of payroll mass to the employer’s single-day “photo” method. The Commissioner’s application for judicial review was therefore dismissed, and the award in favour of LANEQ and Me Lapalme was confirmed. As a result, the Commissioner remains bound to recalculate the mass of salaries as of 31 December 2021 in accordance with the arbitrator’s interpretation and to pay Lapalme the corresponding additional remuneration for her special mandates. The Court also ordered the dismissal of the judicial review “avec frais de justice”, meaning ordinary legal costs are payable by the Commissioner to the successful party. The decision, however, does not specify the exact quantum of either the additional remuneration or the court costs; the total monetary amount in favour of LANEQ and Me Lapalme therefore cannot be determined from this judgment alone.