Rancourt wrongful dismissal hearings::: Full disclosure is required

(see video commentary below)

In the matter of the on-going binding arbitration tribunal into the wrongful dismissal case of physics professor Denis Rancourt, the University of Ottawa has made a legal undertaking to disclose everything that is "arguably relevant" to all the issues before the arbitrator.

The union (APUO) has established in the tribunal that the issues include that the firing was made in bad faith, under a false pretext, with the goal of silencing and removing Rancourt.

In the words of renowned academic workplace researcher Professor Kenneth Westhues, the Rancourt firing was an "administrative mobbing."

The University provided its disclosures six months after the May 2, 2011, start of the hearings.

These University disclosures were reported by the union to the tribunal on November 1, 2011, as being "superficial" and "incomplete", in what can only be characterized as an understatement.

Hired-lawyer Lynn Harnden for the University on November 1, 2011, undertook to "verify" the completeness of the University's disclosures, which contain virtually no documents about any of the particulars of bad faith which the union has submitted.

The latter union-advanced particulars include:

• The University's 2006-2008 covert information-gathering campaign against Rancourt and other University employees and students
  

• The University's 2007 unjustified barring of Rancourt from all first-year-level courses

• The University's 2008 unjustified barring of Rancourt from all teaching

• The University's November-2008 lock-out of Rancourt and all his graduate students from their laboratory and the removal of essential laboratory materials

• The University's December-2008 banning of Rancourt from campus except with police escort, including his campus radio show and his cinema discussion series
  

• The University's 2009 refusals to consider duly submitted documents in its decision to fire Rancourt

• The University's 2011 funding of a private lawsuit against Rancourt, now used as evidence for "post-dismissal conduct to support the decision to dismiss"
  

Such apparent disregard of an undertaking to disclose, if not corrected, is an egregious breach of natural justice. For the arbitration to be allowed to proceed under these conditions, if not substantively corrected, would be a fatal flaw in the tribunal process.

Here is professor Rancourt's reaction in a video interview made on November 1, 2011:

Message to U of O:
Full disclosure is required

All posts about the wrongful dismissal hearings: HERE.

See hearings schedule and reports: HERE.

Chronology of wrongful-dismissal background events: HERE.

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