More than eight years after her employment ended, a former University of Alberta communications employee was ordered back into the workplace.
The employee had worked as a Communications Strategist in the University’s School of Business. Her employment was terminated in December 2017. She later filed a human rights complaint alleging discrimination based on physical and mental disability.
An earlier Tribunal decision found that the University had discriminated against her by failing to accommodate her disability and by terminating her employment. The Tribunal awarded damages for injury to dignity and for employment related losses.
The University sought judicial review. The Court of King’s Bench upheld the discrimination finding but concluded that the Tribunal had not properly considered whether reinstatement should be part of the remedy. The matter returned to the Tribunal for that question.
The University argued that reinstatement was no longer realistic. The School of Business had been restructured, the original position had changed and more than eight years had passed. It also argued that reinstatement could place the employee in a better position than she would have occupied if the discriminatory termination had not occurred.
The Tribunal was not persuaded that time alone made reinstatement inappropriate. It emphasized that the University is a large employer with many faculties, departments and affiliated institutions. That organizational breadth created realistic opportunities to find a reasonably equivalent role, and retraining could be used if necessary.
The state of the relationship also mattered. The Tribunal did not find evidence that the employment relationship had become irreparably damaged or that serious animosity made a return impossible. The employee had consistently expressed a desire to return.
The Tribunal concluded that reinstatement was the remedy most capable of restoring the employee to the position she would have occupied absent the discrimination. It ordered the University to reinstate her to a reasonably equivalent or comparable position and to make reasonable efforts to identify an appropriate placement. Employment related entitlements were also to be restored, while the damages consequences remained subject to further submissions.
For HR teams, the case is a reminder that human rights remedies are restorative. The passage of time can matter, but it is not automatically decisive. Large employers may be expected to look beyond the employee’s former department and consider opportunities across the broader organization.
It also reinforces the value of a genuine accommodation process before termination. A decision that ends employment can remain legally significant years later, and the remedy may involve rebuilding the employment relationship rather than simply paying damages.
The decision is Wegner v University of Alberta, 2026 AHRC 107.