Executive Summary: Key Legal and Evidentiary Issues

• Timeliness and propriety of a post-defence motion for further particulars and to strike the claim as “scandalous, frivolous or vexatious” under Rule 25.11.
• Adequacy of the plaintiff’s existing pleadings and earlier written particulars to meet the “full particulars” requirement where misrepresentation, malice and bad faith are alleged under Rule 25.06(8).
• Extent to which a defendant can insist on granular details (dates, times, locations, wording) in pleadings versus leaving such detail to oral and documentary discovery.
• Whether a defendant who has already delivered a detailed defence, agreed to a timetable, exchanged affidavits of documents and mediated can later rely on alleged pleading deficiencies to delay discoveries.
• Availability of a pre-emptive protective order under Rule 30.06(d) to bar questioning and discovery about an Ombudsperson’s systemic inquiry report and a DEI survey said to evidence systemic discrimination.
• Application of the modern, narrower relevance standard and proportionality principles to determine whether workplace-wide DEI and Ombudsperson materials are discoverable in a constructive dismissal and discrimination action.

Background and employment relationship
Christina Van Drunen worked for Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) for 24 years before resigning on August 31, 2022. She held a senior role and alleges that, in the final years of her employment, her responsibilities were progressively diminished, she was excluded from important meetings, and she was subjected to gender-based discrimination and a toxic work environment. These alleged conditions ultimately led to her resignation, which she characterizes as a constructive dismissal rather than a voluntary departure.
On April 12, 2023, she commenced an action for constructive dismissal and breach of employment contract. She claims $320,000 in damages for breach of contract and constructive dismissal, plus $175,000 in general and punitive damages, all arising from what she says were discriminatory and bad-faith actions by senior management at CNL.

Allegations of discrimination, misrepresentation and toxic workplace
In her Statement of Claim, amplified by two sets of written particulars provided in May and September 2023, Ms. Van Drunen alleges that senior leadership at CNL engaged in systemic and individual gender discrimination. She pleads that, in her last two years, most senior hiring decisions favoured less qualified men, naming specific male comparators and asserting that women and people of colour at the director level were told they had to compete for reconfigured roles while white male colleagues retained their positions.
A former vice-president, Dr. Kathryn McCarthy, is alleged to have told her that senior leadership would only accept men in senior roles. The outgoing VP, Mr. Griffin, is said to have told her she could compete for a new role while privately communicating that she would not seriously be considered, and to have made a baseless ethics complaint and engaged in derogatory conduct that she characterizes as intentional, high-handed and malicious.
Mr. Griffin’s deputy, Mr. Darren Radford, is alleged to have been consistently dismissive and derogatory. According to the plaintiff, her concerns about his conduct were raised in emails and performance discussions but not addressed. She also asserts that her salary lagged behind that of male colleagues at her level until female VP Dr. McCarthy intervened and corrected the discrepancy.
Beyond her personal treatment, she alleges broader discriminatory attitudes and behaviours within senior leadership: women being addressed as “girls,” being told to “tart up” work product, a senior leader indicating he cared about International Women’s Day only because he “had a daughter,” and complaints of “reverse discrimination” from male leaders. She further says she raised concerns about a shrinking proportion of women in senior leadership roles on multiple occasions with specified individuals, lodged a report through a corporate reporting system, and participated in a diversity survey, all without meaningful change.
Ms. Van Drunen states that she felt so threatened at work that she met on several occasions with CNL’s Designated Recipient for Violence & Harassment and the Ombudsperson, naming both officials and identifying several dates on which she sought their assistance.

Reliance on workplace DEI processes and systemic review
The plaintiff’s pleadings refer expressly to two internal CNL processes and documents: an Ombudsperson’s systemic inquiry report on cultural diversity and gender equality and a company-wide Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) survey. She alleges that CNL’s Ombudsperson confirmed to her that there were systemic issues around cultural diversity and gender equality and that these concerns prompted a formal review of the treatment of women at CNL. The Ombudsperson is said to have reported that her findings regarding gender discrimination and harassment in areas such as recruitment, advancement and compensation were “harsh,” and that many female employees faced barriers in raising and resolving these concerns with management.
Separately, the DEI survey is described as examining employee perceptions of discrimination, recruitment, promotion, advancement, compensation and the effectiveness of mechanisms for addressing inequities. The survey also contained “next steps” relating to education and training of management to create a more equitable work environment. Although Ms. Van Drunen is not named in the systemic report and the survey responses are anonymized, she pleads that these documents corroborate and lend credibility to her personal account of discrimination and toxicity.

Procedural history: pleadings, particulars and the motion
After the claim was served, CNL demanded particulars and received a response on May 9, 2023, followed by an amended response on September 8, 2023. Dissatisfied, CNL nonetheless chose not to immediately bring a motion for particulars. Instead, it filed a Statement of Defence on December 21, 2023, explicitly purporting to preserve its right to later seek further particulars and to amend its Defence once those particulars were provided.
Before filing the Defence, the parties agreed on a litigation timetable. Affidavits of documents were exchanged in April 2024, and the parties participated in an early mediation in July 2024, which was unsuccessful. Only afterward, in August 2024, did CNL refuse to proceed to examinations for discovery unless full particulars were provided, tying its participation in discovery to its contemplated motion. CNL did not serve its notice of motion until July 2025, and the motion was heard in February 2026. The court found that this strategy contributed to a delay of roughly 20 months in the progress of the case.
Substantively, CNL brought two principal requests: first, under Rule 25.11(b) of the Ontario Rules of Civil Procedure, an order striking out the Claim as scandalous, frivolous or vexatious unless the plaintiff delivered an amended Statement of Claim with “full particulars” of the alleged misrepresentations, malice and bad faith as required by Rule 25.06(8); and second, under Rule 30.06(d), an order declaring the Ombudsperson’s report and the DEI survey irrelevant and non-discoverable, thereby insulating them from questioning at oral discovery and from any production demands.

The court’s approach to particulars and civil procedure rules
The decision is anchored in the Rules of Civil Procedure rather than any insurance or similar policy wording. The key rules in play are Rule 25.06(1), which requires every pleading to contain a concise statement of material facts (not evidence), Rule 25.06(8), which calls for “full particulars” where fraud, misrepresentation, breach of trust, malice or intent is alleged, and Rule 25.11(b), which permits the court to strike a pleading as scandalous, frivolous or vexatious (with or without leave to amend).
The court accepted that, even where a plaintiff does not plead the specific torts of fraud or breach of trust, defendants may in some cases be entitled to fuller particulars if allegations of misrepresentation, malice or bad faith are used in support of other causes of action, such as constructive dismissal. It cited authorities warning that defendants should not be left to “connect the dots” to determine the nature and content of alleged misrepresentations.
However, the court emphasized that what counts as “full particulars” is contextual and must be assessed in light of the entire factual matrix, including what information has already been provided through earlier particulars and exchanged documents, and what can reasonably be left to oral and documentary discovery. It rejected the idea that a defendant is entitled, at the pleading stage, to granular minutiae such as precise dates, times, locations and wording of every comment, where the identities of key participants, general timeframes and the nature of the alleged conduct are already clear and can be explored in discovery.
Critically, the judge found that by filing a comprehensive Defence—after receiving particulars and while being repeatedly invited to seek court-ordered particulars—CNL had effectively demonstrated that it understood the case it had to meet. The Defence addressed the plaintiff’s role and responsibilities, the restructuring in 2020–2021, the reasons for promotions and non-competitions for certain roles, the exclusion from meetings, and the workplace policies governing harassment and conduct, and it explicitly denied the key allegations. In these circumstances, the court held that CNL could not, after the fact, rely on alleged deficiencies in the Claim to delay discovery and re-open its pleading obligations.

Analysis of alleged pleading gaps and available evidence
The court then reviewed, paragraph by paragraph, the main allegations for which CNL still sought particulars. In each instance, it concluded that CNL already had enough information—through the Claim, the prior particulars, named individuals, identified documents, dates of meetings or evaluations, and known restructuring events—to understand the gist of the allegations and prepare its defence.
For example, the assertion that most senior hiring in the last two years favoured less qualified men was tied to named individuals whose hiring dates, positions and qualifications were within CNL’s own records. Comments about senior leadership only accepting men in senior roles were linked to an identified outgoing vice-president. Claims about required competition for roles were tied to the reorganization period and to known staff. Allegations of derogatory and dismissive treatment were connected to specific emails, performance evaluations on or around particular dates, and meetings with named managers.
Similarly, the claim that the Ombudsperson had undertaken a systemic review and conveyed “harsh” findings was supported by the existence of the Ombudsperson’s report itself and by specified meeting dates between the plaintiff and the Ombudsperson. The court found that the absence of precise dates, locations, or the names of every colleague alleged to have engaged in certain conduct did not make the pleadings facially deficient or incomprehensible. Those details could be properly explored through questioning and documentary discovery, rather than being demanded as pre-conditions to moving forward.
Given that the Statement of Claim, read together with the earlier particulars, disclosed a reasonable cause of action and provided a coherent, understandable narrative, the court declined to treat it as “scandalous, frivolous or vexatious” and refused to order further particulars or to strike the pleading.

Discoverability and relevance of the DEI survey and Ombudsperson report
On the second major issue, the court analyzed whether it could or should make a pre-emptive order barring questioning or discovery about the DEI survey and Ombudsperson’s systemic report. CNL argued that these documents would serve only as similar act evidence, that they failed the criminal-law-inspired test for admissibility of similar fact evidence from R. v. Handy, and that they were irrelevant to the plaintiff’s individual claim.
The judge rejected this position on several levels. First, the plaintiff had not yet brought any motion for production, nor had she explicitly advanced a similar-act-evidence theory. She bore no burden on this motion. Second, Rule 30.06(d)—which allows the court to inspect documents where a relevant document is omitted from an affidavit of documents or privilege is improperly claimed—was inapplicable because it is CNL, not the plaintiff, that holds the documents and is seeking to shield them in advance.
Third, and most significantly, the court found that it would be premature and speculative to decide admissibility and proportionality questions before knowing precisely what questions would be asked in discovery, what portions of the documents would be sought, and for what purposes. The judge stressed the post-2010, narrower approach to relevance in civil discovery, which is grounded in the pleadings but also recognizes that some issues of relevance may require evidence beyond the four corners of the pleadings.
Having nonetheless reviewed the documents, the judge concluded that both the Ombudsperson report and the DEI survey are relevant to the issues raised in the claim. They speak directly to systemic gender discrimination, harassment, recruitment, promotion, advancement, compensation and employees’ ability to raise and address inequities—the same themes pleaded by Ms. Van Drunen in describing a discriminatory and toxic environment that led to her constructive dismissal. They also bear on CNL senior management’s knowledge of systemic problems and their response, or lack of response, to those problems, which is important in assessing the reasonableness of management’s conduct and the plaintiff’s decision to resign.
The anonymity of survey respondents and the lack of individual names in the systemic report do not defeat relevance; rather, they limit the extent to which those documents might ultimately be used as similar fact evidence at trial. The judge recognized that even if the documents are discoverable, their admissibility and weight at trial will remain subject to ordinary evidentiary rules, including hearsay, prejudice versus probative value, and the principles governing similar fact evidence. Those questions are left for another day.

Outcome and implications for the parties
CNL’s motion was dismissed in its entirety. The court refused to strike the Statement of Claim or order the plaintiff to provide further particulars, holding that the pleadings, combined with the particulars already delivered, were sufficient to allow CNL to understand and respond to the case, particularly given that it had already done so in a detailed Defence and participated in key procedural steps. The attempt to preserve a right to later amend the Defence, contingent on obtaining more particulars at an unspecified time, was found to be inconsistent with the orderly management of litigation timelines and expectations.
On the discovery front, the court declined to grant a pre-emptive protective order under Rule 30.06(d) and held that the Ombudsperson’s systemic inquiry report and the DEI survey are relevant and discoverable. Plaintiff’s counsel may therefore question CNL witnesses about these documents at discovery. If, in the future, the plaintiff seeks production and CNL resists, CNL will bear the burden of showing why all or portions of the documents are irrelevant to pleaded issues or disproportionate to produce. Any eventual attempt to tender the documents at trial will be governed by established evidentiary principles, and the trial judge will determine their admissibility and weight.
As the moving party, CNL was unsuccessful, and Ms. Van Drunen was held to be the successful party on the motion, presumptively entitled to her costs of the motion. The judge directed the parties to attempt to agree on costs, failing which they must exchange short written submissions. However, no dollar amount for costs is set in this decision, and the underlying damages claim for constructive dismissal and related relief remains to be adjudicated at trial or otherwise resolved. Accordingly, while the plaintiff is the successful party on this motion, the total monetary amount ordered in her favour (for both costs and damages) cannot yet be determined from this decision alone.