Employment Insurance (EI)

Decision

[1] T. C. is the Claimant. The Canada Employment Insurance Commission (Commission) refuses to pay Employment Insurance (EI) benefits. The Commission says she quit her job without just cause. The Claimant is appealing this decision to the Social Security Tribunal (Tribunal).

[2] I am allowing the Claimant’s appeal. I find that she has proven that she had just cause for leaving her job. I find that she had a special responsibility to her community because of her role as an elder. So, I find that leaving her job was her only reasonable course of action, in her circumstances.

Overview

[3] The Claimant is an indigenous elder. She was living in a city, but she found it hard to practice her cultural traditions in the city. She moved back to her traditional territory and started a job at her nation’s band office. After a couple of months, the Claimant quit her job. She applied for EI benefits. The Commission decided that she left her job without just cause and disqualified her from receiving EI benefits.

[4] The Commission says the Claimant had reasonable alternatives to leaving her job. The Commission says she could have stayed in her job until she found a more suitable job.

[5] The Claimant disagrees. She said she had to leave her job because she didn’t have the energy to balance an office job with helping her community with cultural practices and traditions. She says that the discovery of unmarked graves at many residential schools over the summer of 2021 brought up trauma in her community. It was important for her to help build her nation back up with her knowledge of traditional cultural practices.

Issue

[6] I have to decide if the Claimant is disqualified from receiving EI benefits. To make this decision, I have to make two decisions:

[7] Did the Claimant quit (or voluntarily leave) her job?

[8] If she did quit, did she have just cause for leaving?

Analysis

The Claimant and the Commission agree that she quit her job

[9] The Claimant’s employer says she stopped working because she quit. The Commission agrees with the employer. The Claimant also agrees. She says that she stopped working because she quit. She chose to leave her job.

[10] Nothing in this file makes me think the Claimant stopped working for any other reason. I find that she stopped working because she quit. The law calls this voluntary leaving. So now I must decide if she had just cause for leaving.

The parties disagree about whether the Claimant had just cause

[11] The law says that you are disqualified from receiving benefits if you left your job voluntarily and you didn’t have just cause.^{Footnote 1} Having a good reason for leaving a job isn’t enough to prove just cause.

[12] The law explains what it means by “just cause.” The law says that you have just cause to leave if you had no reasonable alternative to quitting your job when you did. It says that you have to consider all the circumstances.^{Footnote 2}

[13] It is up to the Claimant to prove that she had just cause. She has to prove this on a balance of probabilities. This means that she has to show that it is more likely than not that her only reasonable option was to quit.^{Footnote 3}

[14] When I decide whether the Claimant had just cause, I have to look at all of the circumstances that existed when the Claimant quit. The law sets out some circumstances I have to look at,^{Footnote 4} but I can also look at circumstances that aren’t in the list.

[15] After I decide which circumstances apply to the Claimant, then she then has to show that she had no reasonable alternative to leaving at that time.^{Footnote 5}

The circumstances that existed when the Claimant quit

[16] The Claimant didn’t describe any of the circumstances listed in the law. But she says she had a responsibility to her community to act as an elder and share her knowledge of cultural practices. She wanted to use her knowledge to help community members heal from the trauma and intergenerational effects of residential schools. She also says that I should consider how systemic racism makes it harder for her to get a different job.

[17] The Claimant said she thinks the Commission’s records of conversation don’t capture her entire explanation of her circumstances. She thinks the Commission agents only recorded the parts of their conversations that addressed the issues under the law. Also, the Claimant said she grew up in an oral culture. She expresses herself best through speaking. Sometimes she might leave things out if she has to explain herself in writing.

[18] I believe the Claimant. I believe that she didn’t give a full explanation to Commission agents about all of the things that were going on at the time she decided to leave her job. I have a lot of respect for Commission agents, but they speak to claimants and make their decisions in a different way than the Tribunal does. The Commission agents talked to the Claimant on the phone, but I held a videoconference hearing with the Claimant. We could see each other as we spoke. I asked the Claimant open-ended questions. We weren’t in a rush to finish our conversation. Instead, the Claimant had as much time as she wanted to talk about her circumstances.

[19] For these reasons, I think the things the Claimant said at the hearing were reliable. I understand that the Commission’s records of conversation don’t have all the details that the Claimant told me at the hearing. But I don’t think this means that the Claimant is untrustworthy. Instead, I think it just means that she didn’t explain all of her circumstances to the Commission agents. She left some things out, but she had the chance to add these things during the hearing. So, I give a lot of weight to the things the Claimant said at the hearing. I give them more weight than the Commission’s records of conversation.

[20] At the hearing, the Claimant described her role in her community. She said she grew up speaking Cree. She knows about cultural practices, like the sweat lodge, rites of passage, and pipe ceremonies. She has an important role in her community as an elder. She shares these cultural practices with her community members. Like other indigenous communities, the Claimant’s community has social problems because people are living with intergenerational trauma. The Claimant said cultural practices are a way to help her nation build itself back up and help people heal.

[21] But the Claimant also has an understanding of Western knowledge systems. She went to school and trained in accounting. She has experience giving talks and workshops to non-indigenous groups.

[22] So, I find that the Claimant has a special role in her community. She is an elder with knowledge of cultural practices she can share with other members of her community who need these traditions to help heal. She also has experience with Western systems. This means that the Claimant can help bridge Western and indigenous systems. This is the Claimant’s role in her community.

[23] The Claimant said that she found that she didn’t have the energy to work in an office all week and then help community members with cultural practices. She was too tired after the workday. For instance, she said she would work all day and then she was too tired to get the ground ready for a sweat lodge. Or, it was too late in the day to get started. So, the Claimant said it was hard to balance her office work with her responsibilities as an elder.

[24] The Claimant also talked about the discovery of unmarked graves at residential schools. She said she helped lead a four-day fire to bring together community members and residential school survivors. She said this helped her realize how important her role was in the community. Her nation is going to start using radar to explore the grounds of the nearby residential school in spring 2022. So, she wants to help with healing ceremonies before and after this happens.

[25] The Claimant gave me a lot of information about her role in her community. She holds a lot of knowledge of traditional cultural practices and it is important for her to share this knowledge with her nation. Her role became even more important after the discovery of unmarked graves at residential schools. This is because people in her community need cultural practices to help heal their own trauma. I think this is an important circumstance, and I will consider the Claimant’s role in her community when I decide if she had reasonable alternatives to leaving her job.

[26] Finally, the Claimant also said that I should consider how systemic racism makes it harder to find a job. She lives in a remote community and most of the jobs in her community are with the band office. Outside of the band office, she would have to drive to other communities for work. She said systemic racism means that employers outside of her nation don’t want to hire indigenous people.

[27] I believe the Claimant. I believe that looking for a different job isn’t the same for the Claimant as it is for non-indigenous people.

[28] I find that systemic racism, and how it makes it harder to find a job, is another factor that I should consider when I look at whether the Claimant had reasonable alternatives to leaving her job.

The Claimant had no reasonable alternatives

[29] Now, I have to decide if the Claimant had reasonable alternatives to leaving her job when she did.

[30] The Commission says the Claimant had reasonable alternatives. The Commission says she could have found another job before she quit.

[31] The Claimant disagrees. She says she talked to her employer about her role in the community and they agreed that it was important for her to be available as an elder to their community. She also says that she didn’t have the time or energy to balance an office job with her responsibilities as an elder.

[32] I agree with the Claimant. I find that, in her particular circumstances, leaving her job was her only reasonable course of action.

[33] The law recognizes that leaving a job to take care of an immediate family member is a circumstance that often means you have just cause for leaving your job.^{Footnote 6}

[34] The Claimant didn’t leave her job to care for an immediate family member. But I think her situation is comparable. She left her job to care for her community, by devoting more time to her role as an elder. I find that her role was especially necessary because of the discovery of unmarked graves at residential schools during the summer of 2021.

[35] The Claimant said she took several days off work after the discovery of the unmarked graves at the X residential school. Her community held a four-day fire to bring residential school survivors together. The Claimant helped with cultural practices, like the pipe ceremony, singing and dancing, and a tobacco pouch burning ceremony. After the four-day fire, she talked to her employer about her role in the community. She said the Chief Administrative Officer and the Human Resources person both agreed that the Claimant’s job didn’t call on her to help her community in the role of an elder. The employer also saw how the job meant that the Claimant could only help community members with cultural practices on evenings and weekends. They agreed that the community needed cultural practices to help address the social problems in the community.

[36] The Claimant said there weren’t other jobs available in the band administration that would let her act as an elder. She said there is going to be a healing lodge opening in spring 2022, and this will probably have a place for her as an elder.

[37] I believe the Claimant. I believe that she talked to her employer about the job and her strengths, and I believe that the employer didn’t have a way to change her duties to give her more room to help community members with cultural practices.

[38] The Claimant also said she didn’t have the energy to balance a full-time office job with her role as an elder. I believe her. I believe that it was hard for the Claimant to do both. I also find that it was very important for her community to have the Claimant as an elder.

[39] In other circumstances, the Claimant might have been able to spend more time waiting for a different job to come up. But I think the discovery of unmarked graves made it even more urgent for the Claimant to give more energy to her role as an elder. To put it simply, the Claimant’s community needed cultural practices to get through the trauma that these discoveries brought up.

[40] Considering how urgent and important it was for the Claimant to take on this role, I don’t think it was reasonable for her to stay in her job until she found another job. It wasn’t reasonable for her to work in an office all day and then spend her evenings and weekends helping her community.

[41] So, when I look all the circumstances that existed when the Claimant left her job, I find that leaving the job was her only reasonable course of action. I find that the Claimant has proven that she had just cause for leaving her job.

Conclusion

[42] I am allowing the Claimant’s appeal. She has proven that she had just cause for leaving her job. She isn’t disqualified from receiving EI benefits.