Ottawa police don't get paid holiday to mourn Queen

Seven months after an arbitrator found Ottawa police officers were owed holiday benefits to recognize a day of mourning for Queen Elizabeth II, a court has stripped them away.

The Ottawa Police Services Board had argued the arbitrator's decision was absurd, since it would have entitled police to a paid day off every time the government proclaims a symbolic day. That could have granted police officers 14 to 20 additional holidays each year.

After the Queen died last year, the federal cabinet proclaimed Sept. 19, 2022, a day of mourning and asked all Canadians to set it aside to honour her memory. It designated the day as a holiday for public servants and invited other employers to recognize it.

The board did not recognize it as a paid holiday. That prompted the Ottawa Police Association (OPA), the union representing Ottawa Police Service (OPS) members, to file two grievances claiming the board was violating collective agreements, which state that "any day proclaimed" by the federal or provincial governments, or by the city, "shall be a statutory holiday."

The agreements do not explicitly state that the government must proclaim the day as a holiday. In a March decision, an arbitrator took that at its plain meaning and granted retroactive holiday benefits to OPA members for the day of mourning.

The arbitrator said the board "must live with the wording it agreed to."

But in an appeal, the board argued that was wrong. The federal government proclaims all sorts of days, including to honour the contributions of firefighters or the victims of air disasters or the efforts of Canadians during the pandemic. The late Prince Philip also had his day of mourning.

The collective agreement could not possibly have meant to give police a paid day off on every one of those days, according to the board's argument. It called it "utterly inconceivable" that the two parties to the contract intended that result.

This week, three divisional court justices agreed, saying the arbitrator's decision was unreasonable and would expose the OPS to runaway costs as more and more days were proclaimed.

They quashed the arbitrator's award and charged $10,000 of costs to the union.

Police 'swore our oath' to late Queen

Board chair Gail Beck told CBC in an email that the board is pleased with the decision and grateful for the clarity it provides.

She did not give a specific estimate for how much the holiday benefits for the Queen's day of mourning would have cost, but instead cited the court finding that the arbitrator's decision could have led to "an accumulating and significant expense."

OPA president Matthew Cox provided a rough estimate of the cost, saying it was in the neighbourhood of a million dollars for the Queen's day of mourning. He said the union's intention was to seek a holiday for Sept. 19, 2022, alone, not the ever-expanding list of symbolic days the board called absurd.

He said the OPA was disappointed by the court's decision to reverse the arbitrator's award and plans to appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal. 

"We do understand that there probably needs to be discussions about the way that the language is written in our collective agreement," Cox said in an interview. "But the way that the collective agreement is presently written now, this decision should have gone in our favour."

He said the late monarch had special significance for police officers.

"When I was hired we swore our oath to the Queen, now you swear an oath to the King," he said. "So the monarch is very important to the policing profession."