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Labour - Collective Agreement. Ottawa Police Services Bd. v. Ottawa Police Assn.
In Ottawa Police Services Bd. v. Ottawa Police Assn. (Div Court, 2023) the Divisional Court considered (and allowed) a JR by a police services board of an arbitration - the arbitration holding that, as a matter of interpretation, a paid public holiday applied. In this quote the court considered the interpretation of the collective agreement:Principles of collective agreement interpretation
[33] At para. 24 of the Decision, the Arbitrator referenced the principles of collective agreement interpretation, quoting at length from Ontario Power Generation v. Society of Energy Professionals, 2015 CanLII 56079 (Ont. L.A.), a decision on which both parties relied. Those principles include the following:(i) the contractual intent of the parties must be determined by an objective contextualized approach to the words they used in the contract document;
(ii) collective agreement language must be given its plain and ordinary purposive labour relations interpretation. This means that a literal, dictionary, or corporate commercial approach to interpretation is not necessarily appropriate. However, although the overall labour relations context (including the applicable legislative framework) in which a collective agreement is bargained is important, the most important contextual consideration is that of the particular provision(s) in issue within the broader context of the particular collective agreement;
(iii) a general guiding “principle” requires that the language used must be interpreted in a manner which best preserves the spirit and intent of the collective agreement;
(iv) the fundamental rules of collective agreement interpretation can therefore be summarized as follows:(a) the words used must be given their objective, plain, and ordinary contextual labour relations meaning;
(b) all words must be given meaning, and different words are presumed to have different meanings unless this would lead to a result that is illegal, absurd, or inconsistent with the overall scheme and structure of the collective agreement; and
(c) words or phrases cannot be inferred unless they are essential to the purposive operation of the collective agreement, or to make the collective agreement consistent with mandatory legislation which constitutes the statutory labour relations framework in the jurisdiction. At paras 34-43 the court applies this doctrine to the interpretation issue at hand.
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