Docket: T-2590-24
Citation: 2026 FC 918
Ottawa, Ontario, July 8, 2026
PRESENT: The Honourable Madam Justice Ngo
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BETWEEN:
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JULIE PRÉFONTAINE
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Applicant
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and
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ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CANADA
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Respondent
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REASONS AND JUDGMENT
[1] The Applicant, Julie Préfontaine [Applicant], seeks judicial review of a decision by the Canadian Border Services Agency [CBSA, or employer] refusing her grievance requesting salary protection at an FB-07 rate of pay. The employer concluded that the grievance was untimely, as it was filed outside of the 25-day limit to file a grievance. The grievance was also not founded, as the employer could not pay the Applicant at an FB-07 level after she ceased to exercise the role to which the pay was associated [Decision].
[2] I am mindful that the Applicant is self-represented and understand the frustration that she expressed at the hearing. However, from a legal perspective, I cannot grant this judicial review, for the reasons that follow.
II. Standard of Review
[3] As I explained to the Applicant during the hearing, the role of the Court on judicial review is to examine the reasons provided in the Decision and to seek to understand the reasoning process followed by the decision-maker to arrive at its conclusion. It is not a new or de novo hearing where the Court determines the merits of the Applicant’s grievance.
[4] The Respondent submits, and I agree, that the applicable standard of review is reasonableness (Canada (Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 at para 25 [Vavilov]).
[5] The Supreme Court of Canada instructs that a reviewing court conducting a reasonableness review starts with the reasons and assesses whether the decision is reasonable in the outcome and process, in relation to the factual and legal constraints that bear upon the decision-maker (Vavilov at paras 81, 83, 87, 99).
[6] Reviewing courts should not ask how they themselves would have resolved an issue. Instead, the Court should focus on whether the decision made by the administrative decision-maker — including both the rationale for the decision and the outcome to which it led — was unreasonable (Vavilov at paras 75, 83). A reviewing court should not create its “own yardstick and then use [it] to measure what the [administrative decision-maker] did”
, ask what decision it would have made instead or try to determine the “correct”
solution to the problem (Vavilov at para 83).
[7] The party challenging the decision, here, the Applicant, must satisfy the Court that the decision is unreasonable, and that the identified shortcomings or flaws in the decision are sufficiently central or significant to render it unreasonable (Vavilov at para 100).
III. Background and Decision Under Review
[8] The relevant background information is the following. From 2008 to 2013, the Applicant was a Manager, Regional Programs [MRP] with the CBSA. During this time, her position was classified as FB-06. On May 6, 2013, the Applicant deployed to an FB-06 Senior Program Advisor position with the CBSA in another city.
[9] In 2007, a number of CBSA employees in MRP positions filed grievances of their employment classification under paragraph 208(1)(b) of the Public Service Labour Relations Act, SC 2003, c 22. In 2012, a Classification Grievance Committee [Committee] recommended that the MRP position be given an FB-07 classification. This recommendation was refused by the President of the CBSA in 2013. This decision was the subject of three cycles of judicial review, where the Federal Court quashed the refusals by the President of the CBSA and remitted the matter back for redetermination.
[10] The third refusal cumulated in the Federal Court of Appeal decision in Wilkinson v Canada (Attorney General), 2020 FCA 223 [Wilkinson] which was issued on December 22, 2020. The Federal Court of Appeal found that none of the previous CBSA decisions had the characteristics of an intelligible, transparent and justified decision. The Federal Court of Appeal sent the decision back to the CBSA for redetermination, with the instructions that the President ought to accept the Committee recommendation (Wilkinson at para 70).
[11] On February 15, 2021, the Applicant filed her first grievance [2021 Grievance], requesting that Wilkinson be applied to her situation, meaning that the position of MRP be re-classified as FB-07 for the periods she occupied it, and that she be compensated retroactively from September 2008 to present. She also raised that in May 2013, she accepted a lateral move to a non-managerial FB-06, and that had she been an FB-07, she would not have accepted a position at the FB-06 level. She requested that she be returned to an FB-07 assignment.
[12] After the issuance of the Wilkinson decision, the CBSA assessed whether the remedy ordered would be extended to other MRP position-holders, who were not the applicants in Wilkinson. The Applicant agreed to put her grievance in abeyance while the CBSA assessed the situation.
[13] After review, the CBSA concluded that Wilkinson and the ensuing reclassification would apply to all MRP position holders. On June 28, 2022, the Applicant was informed that she was entitled to retroactive pay for the years she occupied the MRP position from 2008 to 2013.
[14] In 2023, the Applicant received a response to her 2021 Grievance, granting her grievance in part. The decision-maker acknowledged that she would be paid retroactively at a FB-07 level for the years 2008 to 2013. However, the decision-maker found that it is impossible to overturn the Applicant’s decision to leave the MRP position in 2013, as it was done of her own volition and based on the information she knew at the time. Moreover, the decision indicated that the MRP position was reviewed and classified at the FB-06 level in 2022—accordingly, there no longer existed an MRP position in the FB-07 group.
[15] The Applicant acknowledged at the hearing that she did not seek judicial review of the decision refusing her 2021 Grievance.
[16] Instead, on January 24, 2024, she filed a second grievance [2024 Grievance]. It was her understanding at that time that with the right argument, the CBSA would understand her point of view and reach a favourable conclusion. The Applicant asserted in this grievance, that had she known that her MRP position should have been an FB-07 position in 2013, she would have never accepted an FB-06 position when seeking a lateral assignment. Moreover, the Applicant claimed that she did not have all the information available when she changed positions, as she did not know that the Classification Grievance Committee had recommended reclassifying her MRP position to an FB-07 position (as described in Wilkinson). The Applicant requested that her salary be adjusted to the FB-07 level and requested retroactive pay at the FB-07 level from 2013 to present.
[17] The 2024 Grievance was refused, first, on the basis that it was filed out of time. The Decision cited that the Border Services Collective Agreement provides a 25-day time limit to file a grievance. The events which gave rise to the Applicant’s grievance occurred in 2013, when she deployed to a different position, and in 2021, when she learned about the Wilkinson decision. Accordingly, the 2024 Grievance was filed beyond the appropriate time limits.
[18] Second, the employer found that on the merits, the Applicant had been treated within the intent of the Wilkinson decision, as she was provided retroactive pay for the period during which she occupied the MRP position. The Applicant made the decision to make a lateral move based on what she knew at the time. Additionally, when she made the decision to accept the deployment, her MRP position was still classified as FB-06.
[19] The 2024 Grievance is the subject of this application for judicial review.
IV. Analysis
[20] For the following reasons, I do not conclude that the Decision is unreasonable.
[21] It bears repeating that the Court cannot conduct a new, or de novo analysis of the Applicant’s grievance or consider the same evidence to arrive at a different conclusion. The case law refers to this as reweighing or reassessing the evidence, which a Court on judicial review cannot do (Vavilov at para 125).
[22] Rather, on judicial review, the Court must assess the assessment of the 2024 Grievance, beginning with what the Decision says, using a “reasons-first”
approach to seek to understand the reasoning that led to the Decision. The Court must assess these reasons, based on the record before the decision-maker, to analyze whether the Decision was “based on an internally coherent and rational chain of analysis and that is justified in relation to the facts and law that constrain the decision-maker”
(Vavilov at paras 84−85).
[23] First, in the Applicant’s case, the employer and reasonably concluded that the grievance was filed outside of the relevant time limit delays.
[24] The Applicant did not challenge that the applicable Border Services Collective Agreement provides a 25-day time limit to file a grievance. I understand that the Applicant has submitted both to the Court and in the 2024 Grievance that she experiences “continuous and ongoing violations with every day that she is not an FB-07”
to support the timeliness of her 2024 Grievance.
[25] However, it is clear that the events at the heart of the grievance occurred in 2013 and 2021: the Applicant’s deployment to a different position in 2013 and the Wilkinson decision in 2021. Accordingly, it is not unreasonable for the decision-maker in the context of the 2024 Grievance to ground their computation of the applicable timelines in the finding that the Applicant’s grievance was based on these two events and consider the similar nature of the 2021 Grievance as well.
[26] The Applicant did not challenge the 2021 Grievance through judicial review. Although the Applicant reframes her 2024 Grievance and explains that she suffers an “ongoing violation”
, I agree with the Respondent’s submissions that the essence of both grievances was the same.
[27] As such, I cannot find the decision-maker’s conclusion that her 2024 Grievance stems from these two events to be unreasonable. In other words, it was open for the decision-maker to consider these two dates in calculating the time limit to file a grievance. Therefore, it was not unreasonable for the decision-maker to ultimately conclude that the 2024 Grievance was filed out of time.
[28] The Decision also analyzed the merits and substance of the 2024 Grievance. While I appreciate the Applicant’s arguments, I also cannot find the employer’s assessment of the merits of the 2024 Grievance to be unreasonable, given the legal and factual constraints that bear upon the decision-maker. The question is not what decision the Court would have made instead of the decision-maker, but rather, to assess whether the outcome falls within the range of expected outcomes that would have been open to them. In this case, the answer is that it does.
[29] I appreciate the Applicant’s view at the hearing that had the CBSA President reasonably accepted the Committee Recommendation in 2012, she would have made different decisions with respect to her employment because she would have had different facts. However, the Decision addressed this submission. The Applicant’s arguments with respect to this part of the Decision is essentially a disagreement with the decision-maker’s assessment of the facts. The Decision’s findings relate to, among other things, the facts surrounding the Applicant’s departure from the section and her new position, in addition to an analysis concluding that the retroactive pay that the Applicant benefited from was consistent with the intention of Wilkinson.
[30] The Decision set out that the Wilkinson case was known to the Applicant (and was widely known at the time within CBSA) at the relevant times, even if she was not an applicant in the Court proceedings. The record is clear that the Applicant’s decision to move was also based on personal reasons, and that she received advice from her manager about keeping her position in the move. The Respondent has also correctly underlined that the FB-07 MRP position no longer exists. As such, the Decision’s reference that her decision to move into a FB-06 was based on the information that she knew at the time is not unreasonable.
[31] I appreciate that the Applicant vehemently disagrees with the Decision, given events that arose after her move. However, disturbing the findings in the Decision would require me to review the same evidence and argument that the decision-maker has grappled with and substitute its finding of facts with my own. I cannot do so on judicial review.
[32] The Applicant did not identify errors that were central or determinative to the Decision, or that the decision-maker misapprehended (or ignored) her evidence or arguments. Indeed, the Applicant’s arguments attempt to demonstrate that her interpretation of the facts should have led to another outcome.
[33] However, the case law is clear that the same set of facts can lead to more than one reasonable outcome. The fact that another reasonable outcome is possible does not necessarily render the Decision unreasonable. Further, while the Applicant disagrees with or may not like the conclusion in the Decision, this also does not forcibly make the Decision unreasonable.
[34] As Justice Gascon wrote in Joseph v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 FC 1067 [Joseph], “reasonableness review recognizes the legitimacy of multiple possible outcomes, even where they are not the court’s preferred solution. Evidence can be reasonably assessed in different ways. This is the crux of judicial review under the standard of reasonableness.”
(Joseph at para 22, citing Vavilov at para 125. See also Pepa v Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2025 SCC 21 at para 48).
[35] Given the above, the Decision meets the hallmarks of reasonableness, being coherent and rational in its analysis of the evidence and arguments provided. The Decision is intelligible, transparent, and justified.
V. Conclusion
[36] The application for judicial review is dismissed. The Respondent confirmed that they are not seeking costs in this matter.
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