Citation: BR v Canada Employment Insurance Commission, 2021 SST 837
Social Security Tribunal of Canada
General Division – Employment Insurance Section
Decision
| Appellant: | B. R. |
| Respondent: | Canada Employment Insurance Commission |
| Decision under appeal: | Canada Employment Insurance Commission reconsideration decision dated February 19, 2021 (issued by Service Canada) |
| Tribunal member: | Nathalie Léger |
| Type of hearing: | On the Record |
| Decision date: | November 9, 2021 |
| File number: | GE-21-1845 |
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Decision
[1] The Applicant has not proven that there is a reason to reopen and change the Tribunal’s original decision.
[2] The appeal is dismissed, which means the Tribunal’s original decision stands.
Overview
[3] A party can apply to the Tribunal to ask for a decision to be reopened and changed. The party who asks for this is called the Applicant. In this case, the Applicant is the claimant.
[4] The Tribunal originally decided that the Commission exercised its jurisdiction properly when it refused to extend the delay to file for reconsideration. Four months later, the Applicant filed a request to amend or rescind this decision. She filed elements to prove she was not represented correctly by her union and tax documents to prove that she did not receive the amount owed by her former employer.
[5] I find there is enough evidence in the file to make a decision on the record. This means I have decide an oral hearing is not necessary.
Issue
[6] Has the Applicant proven that there is a reason for reopening the original decision? If so, I must then decide how it must be changed.
Analysis
Can the Applicant proceed with his application to amend or rescind a decision?
[7] Yes, the Applicant can proceed with her application to amend or rescind a Tribunal General Division decision dated May 7, 2021. There is no dispute between the parties that the Applicant filed her application within one year of the General Division decision being communicated to her and that this is the first applicationFootnote 1.
Should this decision dated May 7, 2021 be rescinded or amended?
[8] No, I find that the Applicant has not proven that it should be rescinded or amended.
[9] The Tribunal cannot simply reopen a decision when an applicant asks it to do so, Rather, I can only reopen and change a decision for only the following two reasons:
- new facts are presented to the Tribunal, or
- the decision was made without knowing about, or it was based on a mistake about, some material factFootnote 2.
[10] Both of these reasons involve me looking at whether the new information affects6 the issue in the original decision. For new facts, the court has said that I have to look a twhether the new information is “decisive”.Footnote 3 For the second reason I have to look at whether the information is about a “material fact”.Footnote 4
[11] For something to be considered new facts it has to meet one of the following conditions:
- It happened after the Tribunal made the decision; or
- It happened before the Tribunal made the decision, but the Applicant could not have discovered the new facts even if she was acting diligently.
[12] It makes sense that, for both reasons, the Applicant has to show that the new information affects the decision. This is because the Applicant is asking me to change the decision in light of this new information. If the information would not affect or change the decision, then it should not be reopened.
Is the information important enough to affect the issue in the decision?
[13] The information is not important enough because it has no bearing on the question that was answered by the Tribunal in its decision.
[14] The Applicant has provided evidence to show that she did not get the money she was owed by the employer following the arbitration decision. Not only was this fact known to her before the Tribunal made its decision in May, it also has no incidence on the Commission’s decision to grant her an extension of time to file her reconsideration request.
[15] She also provided evidence her tax information for 2009, without really explaining why it was relevant to her request. Obviously, this was information that was available to her before the hearing. The Commission submitsFootnote 5 that she might be trying to show that she did not receive the money owed or that it was not allocated properly. In any event, these are not facts that are relevant to decide if an extension of time to file a reconsideration request should be granted or not.
Conclusion
[16] The appeal is dismissed.