(Ottawa) Major-General Dany Fortin has decided to appeal after a Federal Court judge quashed his request to be reinstated as head of Canada’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign.
Dany Fortin’s legal team filed a notice of appeal of the verdict on Friday, saying Judge Ann Marie McDonald made errors in her ruling last week that the senior officer should have filed a complaint with the army before going to court.
“The judge made many serious legal errors in her decision, which Major-General Fortin is asking the Federal Court of Appeal to overturn,” lawyer Natalia Rodriguez said in a statement.
Major-General Fortin is fighting for his reinstatement after being abruptly removed from his post as chief of the vaccination deployment in May due to a police investigation which resulted in a charge of sexual assault.
The senior army officer, who previously served in Afghanistan and commanded a NATO training mission in Iraq before being assigned last November to lead the federal government’s vaccination campaign, has been officially charged with one count of sexual assault in August.
This case, which concerns an alleged incident dating from 1988, is due to return to a Quebec court on November 5.
Dany Fortin has proclaimed his innocence and accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other senior Liberal government officials of excluding him from the vaccination campaign for purely political reasons.
During two days of court hearings last month, Dany Fortin’s legal team argued that the military’s grievance system was not the right place to decide whether his dismissal was appropriate , given the political nature of the decision.
His lawyers have also voiced concerns about the military grievance system, citing a recent review by retired Supreme Court Judge Morris Fish who found long delays and ultimately described the whole system as ” broken ”and in need of urgent reform.
But Justice McDonald rejected these arguments, writing: “In my opinion, the Major-General’s high-profile profile, his position, and the allegations of political interference are not exceptional circumstances that allow him to bypass the internal process of grievance resolution. ”
Regarding concerns over the grievance system, Justice McDonald noted that Acting Chief of Defense General Wayne Eyre had issued further orders to address issues identified in Justice Fish’s report, adding that any concerns about unnecessary delays were “purely speculative”.
By challenging Justice McDonald’s decision in the Federal Court of Appeal, Dany Fortin’s lawyers argue that the judge made several errors in determining that the grievance system was the appropriate forum to hear the case.
Among their arguments is the fact that the grievance system was not designed to deal with decisions made outside the military chain of command, in this case by politicians. They also argue that the judge did not fully take into account the temporal notions surrounding the case.
Dany Fortin’s lawyers are asking that the case be referred to Federal Court for another judge to hear.
Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan’s office declined to comment.