He got years of support, then a rushed search cost CRA the case
A federal employer spent more than a decade helping a struggling employee stay on the job, then let him go after barely looking for another role he could fill. A labour board said that wasn't good enough and ordered the agency to make it right.
In a decision released May 7, 2026, Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board member Nancy Rosenberg found the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) didn't do enough to accommodate a longtime collections officer with a disability before firing him in 2021. She ordered a payout in place of reinstatement and awarded $5,000 for pain and suffering under the Canadian Human Rights Act.
A career reshaped by illness, then years of adjustments
The employee joined the tax agency's predecessor in 1981 and spent two decades in clerical and mailroom jobs before moving into a collections contact officer role in 2001. A stroke in 2004 put him on sick leave, and by 2008 his employer had noticed he was struggling and started giving him lighter files.
Those adjustments kept growing over the years: fewer and simpler files, no payroll accounts, one-on-one coaching from colleagues, and repeat medical assessments in 2012, 2015, 2018 and 2019 that all pointed to cognitive limitations. Even so, his performance stayed stuck between “does not meet” and “mostly meets” for roughly a decade.
By late 2015, his caseload had shrunk from 260 lighter-duty accounts to just 60, a fraction of the roughly 250 accounts in a typical caseload, while some of his other tasks went to co-workers instead. His own lawyer later conceded the employer had done everything it reasonably could here, and Rosenberg agreed, finding the employer had gone above and beyond on this front.
A search for another role that came up short
In 2017, the employer switched gears, from fixing the employee's performance to looking for a lower-level job he might handle instead. An internal review flagged two open clerical roles at another office. That shift, Rosenberg found, came too late and moved too slowly.
Neither job was ever formally offered. He was told informally about a mailroom opening at a location he said he'd rather not work at, and managers largely let the idea drop after that single response. Instead of a real search, the employer simply "went through the motions of a job search", Rosenberg wrote.
By the 2021 firing, the employer hadn't updated its four-year-old job review or checked in on his current medical situation, and had done no job-search work at all that year. Rosenberg called the overall effort impressionistic, noting the employer already knew of at least three positions that looked promising.
Board finds discrimination, orders compensation
Rosenberg found the employee had shown enough to establish discrimination: he had a disability, he was treated unfairly when he was fired, and that disability was a factor in the decision. Since the employer couldn't show it had accommodated him as far as it reasonably could on the job-search side, its defence didn't hold up.
The board ruled in his favor and ordered a payout instead of his job back, with the amount worked out between the two sides within 90 days or sent back to the board if they can't agree. It also awarded five thousand dollars for pain and suffering, after the employee testified that despite four decades on the job, he felt the employer had "kicked him out."
The board didn't award extra damages for intentional wrongdoing, finding the employer's conduct sloppy and rushed rather than deliberate. Rosenberg noted the employer had gone well beyond what was expected in its earlier efforts to keep him working, but that searching for another job was a separate, essential part of the duty, one it didn't fully carry out.
See Gupta v. Canada Revenue Agency, 2026 FPSLREB 56
