Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Scope of an arbitrator’s power to interpret collective agreement clauses on sick leave and salary insurance when teachers return from disability during the same school year
• Meaning of the expression “quitte son emploi en cours d’année” in clause 5-10.37 and whether it includes temporary absences (such as invalidity) or only permanent departures
• Consistency of the arbitrator’s interpretation with the structure of clauses 5-10.36 and 5-10.37, including the use of the word “définitivement” in clause 5-10.36 D) but not in 5-10.37
• Alleged failure by the arbitrator to meaningfully address the union’s reliance on other clauses (6-8.01 c), 6-8.03 and 14-14.09) said to apply when a teacher definitively leaves employment
• Weight to be given to long-standing, uniform arbitral case law in the education sector interpreting similar or identical wording on proportional reduction of sick days
• Application of the Vavilov “reasonableness” standard in judicial review of labour arbitration, and whether the arbitral reasons were sufficiently justified and within the range of acceptable outcomes

Background and parties
The case arises from a dispute in the Québec public education sector between the Syndicat de l’enseignement de la Haute Côte-Nord (the teachers’ union) and the Centre de services scolaire de l’Estuaire (the school service centre). The union filed a collective grievance challenging the employer’s long-standing practice of reducing teachers’ banks of paid sick leave days when those teachers had received salary insurance benefits (assurance-salaire) due to invalidity and then returned to work during the same school year. The grievance concerned teachers covered by the 2020-2023 sectoral collective agreement negotiated between the Centrale des syndicats du Québec and the Comité patronal de négociation pour les centres de services scolaires francophones, under which teachers at the Centre de services scolaire de l’Estuaire worked. The collective grievance was heard by labour arbitrator Me Hélène Bédard, who issued an award on 17 February 2025 rejecting the union’s position. The union then applied to the Superior Court of Québec for judicial review (pourvoi en contrôle judiciaire), alleging that the arbitrator’s decision was unreasonable and asking that it be quashed and the matter returned to a different arbitrator.

Collective agreement framework and clauses at issue
The central provisions are article 5-10.00 of the collective agreement, entitled “Régimes d’assurance”, and more specifically clauses 5-10.36 and 5-10.37 governing the crediting and adjustment of paid sick leave days. Clause 5-10.36 A) provides that on the first day of the working year, the employer credits each full-time teacher covered by the article with six days of sick leave, but specifies that teachers on certain types of leave (e.g., leave without pay, study leave with pay, pre-retirement leave, or certain insurance benefits) receive only a fraction of the six days corresponding to the fraction of the year they are “in service”. Clause 5-10.36 C) stipulates that these six days are non-cumulative but are cashable at year-end if unused, at 1/200 of the applicable salary per unused day, including prorating for fractions of a day. Clause 5-10.36 D) addresses sick days accumulated in a prior regime under the 2015-2020 agreement and expressly ties the right to cash them out to the moment when the teacher “quitte définitivement le service du centre de services”, again at 1/200 of the salary per day. Clause 5-10.37 then states that if a teacher becomes covered by the insurance article during the school year, or “quitte son emploi en cours d’année”, the number of days credited for that year is reduced proportionally to the number of complete months of service. It defines a complete month of service as a month in which the teacher is in service for at least half the working days. A protective second paragraph adds that if the teacher has already used some or all of the six credited sick days in accordance with the agreement, no reimbursement is claimed despite any deficit created by the proportional reduction. The union argued that this framework, read together with other provisions—specifically clauses 6-8.01 c), 6-8.03 and 14-14.09 dealing with pay, adjustments and recovery of amounts when a teacher “quitte le service du centre de services” or has left the employer—shows that the phrase “quitte son emploi en cours d’année” in clause 5-10.37 must refer to a permanent departure, not a temporary absence such as invalidity covered by salary insurance. The employer took the opposite view: it maintained that clause 5-10.37 authorizes proportional reduction whenever a teacher stops working during the year, whether the departure is temporary or permanent, so long as the teacher becomes covered by the article or “quitte son emploi” within the school year.

The arbitration decision and reliance on sectoral jurisprudence
In the arbitration, the union contended that allowing the employer to adjust the six-day sick leave credit after a teacher returns from an invalidity absence amounted to adding a term to the collective agreement, because clause 5-10.37 is located within the insurance article and, properly read, only deals with coverage and permanent departures. The union also stressed that earlier in clause 5-10.36 A) the agreement explicitly provides for proportional adjustment in certain circumstances, whereas neither 5-10.36 nor 5-10.37 authorize a similar adjustment upon a teacher’s return from invalidity; in the union’s view, that omission was deliberate. It further relied on other clauses (6-8.01 c), 6-8.03 and 14-14.09) to show that when the parties intended to regulate what happens when a teacher definitively leaves employment, they used a broad formulation such as “quitte le service du centre de services”, even when the word “définitivement” is not repeated. The arbitrator rejected these arguments, grounding her reasoning in a long, uniform line of arbitral jurisprudence in the education sector dating back to 1978 and culminating in a 2019 award by arbitrator Huguette April in Commission scolaire Marie-Victorin. In that case, which dealt with similar or even identical wording, arbitrator April characterized the six-day sick leave credit at the beginning of the year as an advance and a form of “prime à l’assiduité”, linked to actual presence at work. She interpreted “avoir quitté son emploi” in the equivalent of clause 5-10.37 as covering both permanent and temporary departures, including temporary absences for invalidity under salary insurance, and concluded that proportional reduction must be applied according to months of effective service. Arbitrator Bédard adopted this approach. She noted that the insurance article provides salary insurance benefits “pour toute période d’invalidité durant laquelle elle ou il est absent du travail”, and found it coherent in that context to treat a teacher who stops working during the year due to invalidity as having “quitté son emploi en cours d’année” for the purposes of proportional adjustment. She emphasized that when the parties wished to tie a right to a definitive departure, they did so expressly, as in clause 5-10.36 D) with the wording “quitte définitivement le service du centre de services”, whereas clause 5-10.37 omits “définitivement”. For the arbitrator, this textual contrast supported giving “quitte son emploi” a broader meaning that includes temporary absences. She concluded that the employer could therefore adjust the sick leave bank proportionally to the number of complete months of service when a teacher returned from an invalidity absence during the same school year, while respecting the protection in the second paragraph of clause 5-10.37 against ex post reimbursement claims when days had already been used.

The union’s judicial review application
Unpersuaded by the arbitration award, the union sought judicial review in the Superior Court, arguing that the decision was unreasonable under the standard articulated by the Supreme Court of Canada in Vavilov. It attacked the award on two main fronts. First, it claimed the outcome did not fall within the range of possible, acceptable interpretations of the collective agreement because, in its view, clause 5-10.37 was clearly confined to situations of permanent departure, and to read “quitte son emploi” as covering temporary invalidity absences rewrote the agreement. The union pointed to the internal structure of clauses 5-10.36 and 5-10.37, arguing that where the parties intended proportional adjustment for partial service, they said so explicitly and did not include return-from-invalidity situations. Second, it asserted that the arbitrator’s reasons were inadequate and failed to grapple with central elements of its argument. In particular, the union criticized the award for giving weight to the absence of the word “définitivement” in clause 5-10.37 while not explaining why other provisions that speak of a teacher who “quitte le service du centre de services” (such as 6-8.01 c) and 6-8.03) should not be understood as addressing permanent departures even when “définitivement” is not used. It also complained that the award treated its argument about “quitte son emploi” as if it had been fully answered by the education-sector jurisprudence, without analyzing why that jurisprudence should control despite the union’s textual and contextual points.

Superior Court’s analysis of reasonableness
Justice Alain Bolduc of the Superior Court began by confirming that, in light of Vavilov and the parties’ own submissions, the applicable standard was reasonableness, with no need to dwell further on the standard of review. He then examined the arbitrator’s decision as a whole, focusing on whether the reasoning was transparent, logical and internally coherent, and whether the outcome fit within the range of acceptable interpretations of the agreement and the factual context. The Court highlighted that the arbitrator had situated her analysis squarely within a consistent line of arbitral decisions in the education sector interpreting similar or identical language, and that she respected the principle—recognized by the Québec Court of Appeal—that while stare decisis does not formally bind labour arbitrators, they should strive for coherence and stability in grievance adjudication, explaining any departure from established jurisprudence. The judgment recounted how the arbitrator adopted arbitrator April’s key findings: that the six-day sick leave credit is an advance and a “prime à l’assiduité”, that it is closely tied to actual service, and that “quitte son emploi en cours d’année” in clause 5-10.37 reasonably encompasses both permanent and temporary departures, including absences for invalidity under salary insurance. The Court accepted as reasonable the arbitrator’s contextual reading, which linked clause 5-10.37 to the insurance-salary regime in article 5-10.00 and to the notion that teachers receiving benefits for invalidity are not “in service” during that period, thereby justifying proportional adjustment when they return during the same school year. On the union’s complaint that the arbitrator did not explicitly analyze clauses 6-8.01 c), 6-8.03 and 14-14.09, the Court acknowledged that these clauses indeed apply to situations where teachers leave the employer and that they do not always use the adverb “définitivement”. However, Justice Bolduc held that this did not suffice to show unreasonableness. The arbitrator’s adoption of the sector’s uniform jurisprudence, which had already confronted similar textual and structural arguments, made it clear that she implicitly rejected the union’s attempt to confine “quitte son emploi en cours d’année” to permanent departures. For the Court, reasons can be implicit so long as, read in context, they allow one to understand why a decision maker was not persuaded by a party’s submissions.

Outcome and practical implications
In the result, the Superior Court held that the arbitrator’s award was grounded in a transparent, rational and coherent chain of reasoning and that it lay within the spectrum of acceptable outcomes given the wording of the collective agreement and the factual matrix of the case. The Court therefore dismissed the union’s application for judicial review and maintained the arbitration award. This means that the Centre de services scolaire de l’Estuaire may continue to apply clause 5-10.37 to proportionally reduce the six-day sick leave credit for teachers who, after receiving salary insurance benefits for invalidity, return to work during the same school year, subject to the protective rule that no reimbursement is sought where credited days were legitimately used. The successful party at the judicial review stage is effectively the employer, the Centre de services scolaire de l’Estuaire (along with the arbitrator as respondent), and the Court ordered that the union’s application be rejected “avec les frais de justice”. The judgment does not specify any precise monetary figure for costs or any damages award, so the total amount ordered in favour of the successful party cannot be determined from the decision.