Media Room

A New Conciliation Model

Along with preventive mediation and pre-investigation mediation, conciliation is one of the alternative dispute resolution services offered by the Canadian Human Rights Commission. Always seeking to serve Canadians better, the Commission has developed a new conciliation model that will provide more options for dealing with complaints. The new model will also increase the information available to parties to encourage settlement, and to Commissioners to make decisions.

The new conciliation model has two separate streams—conciliation with concurrent referral to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, and conciliation without referral. In the first stream, introduced last year, the parties have up to 60 days to try to settle. If they fail, the case goes directly to the Tribunal.

In the second stream, introduced this spring, the complaint is first given to an assessor to prepare a report on the strengths and weaknesses of the case. This report is disclosed to the parties and used by the conciliator to help focus the discussion during negotiations. The parties have a maximum of four months to try to settle; if they fail, the case returns to the Commission with the conciliator’s report on the process and the offers that were exchanged (with the permission of the parties). The assessor’s report is also attached to help the Commissioners decide whether further inquiry by a tribunal is warranted.

The new conciliation model is still under development, and some adjustments will no doubt be made over the coming months. But I believe this is a significant achievement and a good step on the road to making our systems more transparent and efficient.