Ex-female UNB hockey player's complaint to be heard

A former female hockey player with the University of New Brunswick will have her discrimination complaint heard by a board of inquiry, a Court of Queen's Bench judge has ruled.

UNB had tried to stop Sylvia Bryson's sexual discrimination complaint to the Human Rights Commission from being heard.

But Justice Paulette Garnett has dismissed UNB's appeal in a written decision dated April 29.

Bryson, then-head coach Don Davis and Janis Thompson, a volunteer with the program, had all filed human rights complaints against the university after the women's hockey team was downgraded to a club from a program with varsity status in 2008.

That decision cost the team most of its funding and its ability to play in the Atlantic University Sport conference or the Canadian Interuniversity Sports national championships.

Bryson, Davis and Thompson complained UNB had discriminated against the women's hockey team on the basis of sex.

In 2011, the Human Rights Commission decided to forward the complaints to a board of inquiry. UNB filed an appeal to stop the inquiry.

Two years later, Garnett has ruled on the appeal.

"The application by UNB in the Bryson complaint is dismissed," she states in her 20-page decision.

The complaints by the coach and volunteer, however, have been quashed because "the record does not reveal an arguable case," Garnett states.

UNB argued that neither complainant were "aggrieved persons" under the act and the judge agreed.