B.C. policewomen want lawsuit, not labour arbitration, over alleged discrimination

VANCOUVER — A group of female police officers pursuing a class-action lawsuit against municipal police forces in B.C. over alleged harassment, bullying and discrimination say it is not a labour dispute, and they hope the B.C. Court of Appeal agrees.

Several of the plaintiffs and other prospective class members were in attendance at a hearing in Vancouver on Monday as their lawyer urged a three-judge panel to recognize how their lawsuit is about challenging the “poison” in policing culture.

Kyle Bienvenu told the judges that the case is about a system that has “permitted, perpetuated and failed to remedy sexual discrimination against women in municipal policing.”

He said the class-action lawsuit’s allegations should be dealt with collectively in court, not individually through labour arbitration.

Bienvenu said the lower court judge mischaracterized the claim by “fragmenting this dispute” and reducing it to working conditions, “as if this complaint were about parking spaces, overtime pay or retirement benefits.”

The characterization misses the point because these women aren’t complaining about not receiving employment entitlements, he said.

“The female officers who put their names to this claim and those of the class of whom they represent are here because they have experienced the same systemic harassment, discrimination and bullying across multiple police departments.”

Their claim, he said, targets a “system of institutions of overlapping levels of government” that have allegedly failed to stop gender discrimination, bullying, harassment and retaliation in municipal police forces.

He said the lower court judge didn’t give “meaningful weight” to the surrounding facts, and that the case doesn’t involve individual claims against one police force.

“This is a class proceeding in which the class shares common and collective claims of discrimination caused by a system that is designed to fail them,” he said. “It is the case about ending those systems and the resulting culture of discrimination that is cultivated to discriminate against female police officers.”

The lawsuit names several B.C. municipalities and police boards as defendants, and the City of Surrey and its police board claim the issues the lawsuit raises involve working conditions covered by a collective agreement.

The case has not been certified as a class proceeding, and the B.C. Supreme Court last year found it didn’t have jurisdiction over certain claims because they arose under collective agreements, and those disputes are handled by labour arbitrators.

“These matters belong with a labour arbitrator,” Surrey’s lawyer Jill Yates told the panel.

Yates said that “binding” law has already established that the claims made in the lawsuit belong before a labour arbitrator, not the court.

She said the plaintiffs also have other options, including human rights complaints, the province’s workers’ compensation regime or they can pursue grievances through their unions.

She said the case is an attempt to “bypass the representation and grievance resolution mechanisms established under British Columbia labour law with the mechanism of a class action.”

She argued there was no jurisdictional “conundrum,” and if there was a claim that the city failed to ensure safe working conditions that a labour arbitrator couldn’t handle, they could still be dealt with by workers compensation.

“But they don’t belong back in the provincial superior court,” Yates said.

Cheryl Weeks, a plaintiff and former Vancouver police officer, said she and other prospective class members have found it “astounding” that their claims of sexual harassment are being compared legally to a “dispute over a pension plan.”

She said the options being discussed outside a court process won’t provide the same protections to female officers who have been victimized at work.

Some of the plaintiffs, she said, have tried going through their unions.

“But unfortunately, our union and our human resources departments are made up of police officers, which often include an offender themselves or the buddy of an offender, and so it’s not in their best interest to pursue our personal safety,” she said.

Weeks said labour arbitration or workers’ compensation proceedings wouldn’t make victims “right again,” since they could end up still having to work with their harassers.

“They might become their boss. They might have to work next to them on the next shift. They might run into them on overtime,” she said. “Every single person in this class has a story to tell and to say it would be detrimental to the reputations of the police departments is probably an understatement.”

The panel reserved its decision on Monday with no set date for release.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 11, 2026.

Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press