Fortin appeals court ruling in bid to get his vaccine czar post back

Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin is appealing a court decision that found he must first go through the military grievance process to try to get back his position as head of Canada’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

Fortin was removed from the role in May during a military police investigation into an allegation of sexual misconduct.

In August, Fortin was charged with one criminal count of sexual assault over an incident that allegedly took place in 1988. He has denied the allegation.

Fortin claimed he was denied due process and that federal politicians inappropriately interfered in his removal. He took his case to Federal Court, where he asked to be reinstated either as head of the vaccine rollout or to a position commensurate with his rank.

Justice Ann Marie McDonald ruled last week that Fortin must first go through the military’s internal grievance process before coming to the courts.

McDonald sided with the federal government and agreed to strike Fortin’s application for judicial review of the decision to remove him.

In a notice filed Friday with the Federal Court of Appeal, Fortin’s lawyers asked that his case be sent to a different Federal Court judge for a full hearing of his judicial review application.

“The judge made numerous and grave legal errors in her decision which Maj.-Gen. Fortin is asking the Federal Court of Appeal to overturn,” one of Fortin’s lawyers, Natalia Rodriguez, said in a statement Friday.

Fortin maintains that the decision to remove him was not made by the acting chief of the defence staff, but rather by Health Minister Patty Hajdu, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the office of the clerk of the Privy Council.

The group is identified as the “decision-makers” in the notice, which lists eight grounds of appeal.

Fortin’s lawyers argue that McDonald applied the wrong legal test when determining whether the grievance process was an adequate alternative for Fortin. And in her analysis, McDonald “erred” in finding that allegations of improper political interference did not constitute “exceptional circumstances” in order to bypass the military grievance process, the lawyers argue.