Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Characterisation of the locomotive engineer’s COVID-19 isolation as an absence imposed by public health authorities rather than a voluntary or employer-initiated removal from service.
• Interpretation of the collective agreement’s wage guarantee (Appendix 102 spareboard mileage guarantee) where the agreement is silent on pandemic-related isolation and illness.
• Scope of a labour arbitrator’s mandate under the BAMFC framework, including adherence to the “joint statement of issue” and limits on raising new arguments or clauses.
• Application of the Vavilov reasonableness standard to a grievance arbitration award, focusing on whether the arbitrator’s factual findings and contractual interpretation were coherent and justified.
• Alleged reliance on irrelevancies or late-raised considerations (short-term disability and sickness provisions) and whether that breached procedural fairness or the audi alteram partem rule.
• Weight afforded to competing arbitral and court precedents on COVID-19 isolation pay, and whether the arbitrator was obliged to distinguish the union’s authorities explicitly.

Facts and background

The case arises out of a grievance by locomotive engineer Yannick Goulet, a spareboard employee with 17 years of service at Canadian National Railway (CN), who was removed from service and placed in isolation after contracting COVID-19 in October 2020. He was assigned to the Joffre West spareboard and, like other spareboard engineers, benefited from a mileage-based wage guarantee set out in Appendix 102 of the collective agreement between CN and the Conférence Ferroviaire de Teamsters Canada (the Union). That appendix guaranteed locomotive engineers on the spareboard 1,900 freight miles every 14 days, which, as of 1 January 2020, translated to $4,789.89 for the relevant period.
On 21 October 2020, Goulet began experiencing symptoms consistent with COVID-19. He stopped work the next day to undergo testing, and on 23 October 2020 he was informed that he had tested positive. He remained away from work from 22 October to 4 November 2020. During that period, CN paid him a basic daily rate totalling $3,529.40, but not the full spareboard guarantee amount. The Union claimed the difference, asserting that Goulet was entitled to the full guarantee of $4,789.89 for the isolation period, in addition to the base amount already paid.
Goulet was advised that a colleague with whom he had worked on 16 and 17 October 2020 had tested positive. Following his own positive test, CN sent him an email on 25 October 2020 confirming that, because of his exposure and infection, he was required to self-isolate from 25 October to 4 November 2020 and would be placed on a paid leave of absence for up to 10 days. The Union characterisation of this email was that it operated as an “order” from the employer, both removing him from service and promising a form of paid leave.
The grievance proceeded before Arbitrator James Cameron under the auspices of the Railway Office of Arbitration and Mediation (BAMFC/BAMCFC). The parties filed a Joint Statement of Issue in accordance with BAMFC rules, which framed the dispute and was intended to confine the arbitrator to the questions expressly raised. It was common ground between the parties that the collective agreement did not contain any clause that expressly addressed absences or wage entitlement for COVID-19-related isolation or similar public health situations.

Policy terms and collective agreement clauses at issue

At the core of the parties’ disagreement was the application of Appendix 102, titled “Locomotive Engineer Spareboard Adjustment,” which established a guaranteed minimum of 1,900 freight miles every 14 days for engineers assigned to the spareboard. For the relevant timeframe, the guarantee amount was set at $4,789.89. The Union argued that this guarantee was designed to protect spareboard engineers against income loss whenever they were removed from service by the employer, and that the isolation ordered after Goulet contracted COVID-19 should be treated as an employer-attributable absence triggering the guarantee.
The employer countered that Appendix 102 was not intended as a general income-replacement scheme for all forms of non-attendance. In CN’s view, the guarantee presupposed availability for work and applied to normal spareboard fluctuations, not to periods where the employee was unable to work due to illness or a public health mandate. CN also argued that the Union’s reading effectively rewrote the collective agreement by importing an obligation to pay a wage guarantee for circumstances never contemplated by the parties.
The Union invited the arbitrator to reason by analogy from other collective agreement provisions, particularly article 70 and the general principle that employees should not suffer economic loss where they are removed from service at the initiative of the company. It also relied on the wording of the Joint Statement of Issue and the employer’s own written argument, highlighting passages where CN referred to having “requested” or “imposed” isolation, to support a finding that the employer was responsible for the removal and therefore liable for the full guaranteed amount.
CN took the opposite view, emphasising that the isolation resulted from binding governmental decrees and public health directives issued during the pandemic. It further submitted that the collective agreement contained other mechanisms—such as short-term disability and sickness provisions (including articles 54.9 and 54.13)—which dealt with loss of income due to illness, indicating that pandemic-related isolation was better conceptualised as illness or public-health-driven unavailability, not as an employer-directed operational removal.

The arbitration decision and the public health context

In his award dated 8 August 2023, the arbitrator accepted that CN had instructed Goulet to self-isolate and had communicated this requirement via email, but he went behind that immediate factual layer to consider the broader context. Relying on the evidence of ministerial decrees, CN–employee email exchanges and the COVID-19 toolkit issued by Quebec’s labour standards and health and safety commission, he concluded that the isolation requirement did not originate from the employer’s unilateral will. Instead, he found it was the product of public health directives mandating isolation for infected individuals and their close contacts.
The arbitrator described the isolation obligation as “conjoint,” imposed by government on both employer and employee. That characterisation was crucial: if the absence was primarily attributable to the employee’s illness and governmental orders, rather than to an employer decision, the premise that Appendix 102 was triggered became much weaker. In addition, the arbitrator noted that the collective agreement lacked any provision, even by analogy, that expressly or implicitly required CN to pay the spareboard guarantee for an absence caused by COVID-19 isolation.
The arbitrator rejected the Union’s binary framing, in which every absence had to be categorised as either employer-caused or employee-caused for purposes of the wage guarantee. He introduced a third category—absences compelled by a third party (the state, via public health measures)—and held that, in such a scenario, there was simply no contractual basis to extend the guarantee. CN’s payment of the basic daily rate for the period, in his view, went beyond what the collective agreement strictly required and did not convert the isolation into an employer-initiated removal triggering Appendix 102.
He also referenced, without basing his entire decision on them, other financial protections that might be available to workers, such as short-term disability benefits, and considered jurisprudence from other contexts (including the Ontario Nurses’ Association v. Humber River Hospital award) holding that employees required to isolate under government COVID-19 guidelines were generally not entitled to wages in the absence of a specific contractual provision.

Union’s challenge on judicial review

On 7 September 2023, the Union (Conférence Ferroviaire de Teamsters Canada) filed an application for judicial review before the Quebec Superior Court. It sought to have the arbitral award annulled and the matter remitted to a different arbitrator for a hearing de novo, under instructions from the court.
The Union advanced several grounds of review, which the Superior Court grouped into two main themes: first, that the arbitrator had erred by exonerating the employer from responsibility for removing Goulet from the workplace; and second, that he had relied on considerations that were inadmissible under the BAMFC framework, particularly matters not included in the Joint Statement of Issue or previously raised in the pre-arbitration process.
One major strand of the Union’s argument was that the arbitrator’s finding—that public health, not CN, had “imposed” the isolation—was contrary to the uncontroverted evidence. It pointed to the Joint Statement of Issue, which referred to a “quarantine requested by the employer,” and to paragraphs 108-111 of CN’s written submissions, where the company acknowledged having asked Goulet to absent himself. In the Union’s view, the arbitrator had ignored that evidence and built his conclusion on a factual premise that was simply wrong.
Another strand focused on alleged failures of reasoning. The Union accepted, for the sake of argument, that public health orders played a role, but argued that the arbitrator had not adequately explained why that would relieve CN of its wage obligations to an employee who remained part of the spareboard and was otherwise ready to work but for the quarantine. It contended that he had not directly addressed its primary concern—the “imputability” of the monetary loss—and had instead evaded the question by recasting the dispute as if it were about whether Goulet was entitled to anything at all.
The Union further complained that the arbitrator had improperly considered issues that were not contained in the Joint Statement of Issue or raised in the earlier stages of the BAMFC process, particularly suggestions that Goulet might have qualified for short-term disability benefits and references to sickness-absence provisions (articles 54.9 and 54.13). It relied on BAMFC jurisprudence, such as CROA 4744, stressing strict adherence to the issues framed in the Joint Statement, and on broader administrative law authorities warning against deciding cases on the basis of provisions the parties have not had the opportunity to address.

Standard of review and the Superior Court’s analysis

All parties accepted that, following the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, the applicable standard of review was reasonableness. The Superior Court therefore approached the case with deference: its task was not to decide whether it would have interpreted the collective agreement in the same way, but to determine whether the arbitrator’s decision, including both reasoning and result, was intelligible, internally coherent and justified in light of the factual and legal constraints governing him.
The court first addressed the allegation that the arbitrator’s finding on who imposed the isolation was contrary to the evidence. It concluded that the Union’s reading of the Joint Statement of Issue and CN’s written argument was selective. While those documents did acknowledge that CN had “requested” isolation, they also clearly advanced the thesis that CN was merely implementing mandatory public health directives. The court noted that the arbitrator had not ignored the employer’s email or its role in communicating the isolation requirement; instead, he had looked beyond that surface fact to the underlying legal foundation of the isolation, supported by evidence such as ministerial decrees and official COVID-19 guidance.
From that broader perspective, the court held it was open to the arbitrator to characterise the isolation as an obligation jointly imposed by government on both employer and employee, rather than as a unilateral employer decision. That finding did not rest on a factual premise that was clearly wrong or unsupported by the record, and therefore did not fall into the category of unreasonable factual determinations that justify judicial intervention.
On the alleged failure to address the “imputability” of the loss, the Superior Court rejected the suggestion that the arbitrator had sidestepped a central issue. It pointed to paragraphs 15-21 of the award, where he expressly considered (1) the absence of any specific clause covering COVID-19 isolation, (2) his duty not to add to or modify the collective agreement, (3) the proper characterisation of the isolation as driven by public health, and (4) the implications of a third-party-imposed absence for the application of Appendix 102. In the court’s view, that discussion showed that the arbitrator had squarely engaged with the Union’s core contention and had provided a comprehensible explanation, even if the Union disagreed with the result.
As to the criticism that the arbitrator had strayed beyond the Joint Statement of Issue or relied on un-pleaded contractual provisions, the court took a pragmatic stance. It emphasised that the employer’s position from the outset was that it had no obligation under the collective agreement to pay any compensation for COVID-19-related loss of income, aside from what it had voluntarily paid. In that context, the arbitrator’s references to sickness-absence articles and to the possibility of short-term disability were not treated as new, determinative grounds of decision, but as confirmatory examples illustrating that the agreement contained other mechanisms for illness-related loss of income and did not extend the spareboard guarantee to such situations.
The Superior Court also rejected the argument that the arbitrator had improperly reframed the question. Even if one formulated the issue narrowly as “what amount is the employee entitled to?” the court noted that “zero” is a logically possible answer. Determining that Goulet was not entitled to any amount under Appendix 102 for the isolation period fell within the range of acceptable outcomes given the text and structure of the collective agreement and the extraordinary, third-party-imposed nature of the absence.
Finally, the court addressed the complaint that the arbitrator had not cited or distinguished the Union’s case law on COVID-19 measures. It reiterated that, under Vavilov, administrative decision-makers are not bound by stare decisis in the same way as courts and are not required to discuss every authority cited by the parties, particularly where there is no established, consistent internal jurisprudence on point. While it might have been preferable for the arbitrator to deal explicitly with the Union’s authorities, his failure to do so did not render the award unreasonable, especially where he had cited other decisions that he considered more directly relevant and had based his ultimate conclusion on his own reading of the specific collective agreement before him.

Ruling and overall outcome

In its conclusion, the Quebec Superior Court held that the arbitrator’s award met the reasonableness standard. The decision was grounded in an internally coherent view of the facts, recognised the binding effect of COVID-19 public health decrees, and respected the limits of the arbitrator’s role by declining to infer contractual wage guarantees where none were expressed or clearly implied. The arbitrator’s conclusion—that CN was not obliged under Appendix 102 to pay Goulet the spareboard mileage guarantee for a period of COVID-19 isolation imposed by public health authorities—was found to be one of the acceptable, defensible outcomes available on the record.
The court therefore dismissed the Union’s application for judicial review and declined to remit the matter to a new arbitrator. In doing so, it left intact the original arbitration result: Goulet remained limited to the basic daily rate of $3,529.40 already paid for the isolation period, and the additional $4,789.89 claimed under Appendix 102 was not awarded. The Superior Court ordered that the application for judicial review be rejected with costs, but it did not specify any exact dollar figure for those costs, so the total monetary amount ultimately awarded in favour of the successful parties (the arbitrator and, in substance, CN) cannot be determined from the judgment itself.