A former project manager can pursue workplace-discrimination allegations against the Organized Crime Agency of British Columbia reaching back more than three years before their complaint was filed, after the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal found an alleged continuing contravention.
The September 24 decision in Gonzales Burnside v. Organized Crime Agency of British Columbia, 2026 BCHRT 206 accepts allegations covering July 2, 2020, to January 20, 2023. It resolves a filing-deadline issue, not whether the agency discriminated.
Ashleigh Rhea Gonzales Burnside filed the complaint on December 3, 2023, alleging employment discrimination based on disability, gender identity or expression, and family status. The agency accepted that allegations from December 8, 2022, onward were timely but disputed the inclusion of earlier events.
Promotion, transfers and termination
Gonzales Burnside alleged that a director discouraged them from seeking a promotion in July 2020 because of family-caregiving responsibilities. They also alleged that supervisory duties were removed that November and assigned to the person who obtained the promotion.
The agency argued that the supervisory changes were part of restructuring that affected other project managers in similar roles. It disputed the connection between those changes and Gonzales Burnside’s protected characteristics.
Tribunal member Steven Adamson found the complaint alleged enough of a connection to meet the low threshold for an arguable contravention. He expressly left open what a later assessment of the restructuring evidence might establish about discrimination.
After a temporary assignment elsewhere from August to December 2021, Gonzales Burnside returned to the agency in January 2022. They alleged repeated unsuccessful requests for transfers as disability accommodation, followed by a denied six-month RCMP assignment in December, a disciplinary letter referring to medical absences, and a January 2023 termination letter.
A connected series, not continuing effects alone
The Human Rights Code generally requires a complaint within one year. Earlier allegations can be timely if they form part of a continuing contravention: separate alleged discriminatory acts of the same character occurring in succession. The continuing effects of a single past act are not enough.
The agency argued that the promotion allegation concerned family status, unlike later disability-related allegations. Adamson instead identified an alleged common pattern: work absences connected to caregiving and disability were said to have been treated as performance problems that limited career opportunities.
Timing still mattered. A significant unexplained gap can weigh against a continuing contravention, and the doctrine cannot simply bring every old grievance within the filing period. The tribunal considered both the length of each interval and the explanation for it.
Why the gaps did not defeat the complaint
The four months between the promotion and supervisory-duty allegations were explained by the time needed to complete the hiring competition and make structural changes. The longer interval before January 2022 was explained by efforts to obtain accommodation and the period spent working elsewhere.
For the period between January and December 2022, the agency pointed to an apparent 11-month gap, including months when Gonzales Burnside was at work. The tribunal accepted that alleged repeated transfer requests, although not individually dated, together with substantial absence from work, adequately explained that interval for this application.
Adamson therefore accepted the full alleged sequence as timely under the continuing-contravention provision. He did not need to decide the alternative request to admit late allegations in the public interest.
The decision directed the tribunal’s case manager to contact the parties about next steps. It made no discrimination finding or compensation award. Its practical significance is the contextual treatment of connected caregiving and disability allegations, rather than a general exemption from the one-year deadline.
