Q&A about Anicka and John’s legal proceedings with the Québec labor board (CNESST)
October 18, 2024
Since MCC national boards are meeting this weekend, John Clarke and I took this opportunity to write to board members to once again clarify our motivation for filing complaints to the Quebec Labour board, and our ongoing desire for restorative conversation outside the purview of the legal process.
MCC’s latest public statement in response to the formation of MAST says,
“We recognize that because John Clarke and Anicka Fast have an active lawsuit against MCC, this requires us to communicate with them accordingly.
To date, John Clarke and Anicka Fast have declined to participate in the mediation offered by CNESST as a first step in their legal case. We continue to explore other ways to find resolution, such as via other types of mediated conversation.”
It really bothers us when MCC states or implies that we have “declined to participate” in mediation opportunities, or refers to the ongoing legal proceedings as a way to suggest that we have non-restorative intentions or are constraining MCC to communicate with us only through a legal process that we have initiated.
At the same time, we regularly hear, or hear about, people who are wondering things like:
Why did John and Anicka choose a lawsuit as a way of pursuing justice with MCC? (long answer below)
Why aren’t they pursuing more restorative methods of conflict resolution? (short answer: we are)
Will they get a lot of money out of this if they win? (short answer: no)
If there’s a lawsuit already happening, then why do I need to get involved in advocating for justice? (short answer: because this legal complaint only touches on a small aspect of MCC’s abusive practices)
We’re not surprised to hear such questions. We would probably have asked similar questions ourselves if friends of ours had decided to initiate legal action against MCC.
So for those of you who hear about the open letter and petition and are confused about the question of the lawsuit, here is some further background and some excerpts from our correspondence with MCC, where we explain our intentions.
SUMMARY OF LEGAL PROCESS
The Canadian Mennonite article “Involuntary” offers a very helpful and accurate summary of the legal process that we are engaged in. Braun writes:
“In October 2023, Fast and Clarke each filed a formal complaint with the provincial labour board in Quebec, their home jurisdiction. Quebec labour law says a person can file a complaint if they have served two uninterrupted years and “[believe] they have not been dismissed for a good and sufficient cause.” “We [had] been asking [MCC] since April [2023] to just sit down and talk with us, always assuming that things could easily be straightened out, and it was only after multiple failed attempts to get a hearing, and being fired, that we considered this legal channel,” Fast wrote in a December 7, 2023, email to Canadian Mennonite. The couple informed MCC of this step, emphasizing that they still preferred to find resolution outside legal channels. The labour board process includes a mediation option. MCC agreed to this, but when Fast and Clarke discovered that process would require them to commit not to speak publicly of the situation, they opted out. “We do not think that secrecy about these events serves MCC, us, MCC’s partners or the broader Mennonite community, and [we] are determined to preserve our right to speak freely,” they said in an email. A Quebec tribunal is expected to hear the couple’s case within eight to 14 months. Fast and Clarke said they are seeking a measure of justice, not a significant financial award, the latter of which they say is highly unlikely in the labour board process.”
By the way, we now have a hearing date set for January 14, 2025.
OUR THOUGHTS ABOUT THE LEGAL COMPLAINT IN RELATION TO BROADER CONCERNS ABOUT JUSTICE AND RESTORATION
In our initial grievance to the MCC boards, submitted on Nov 3, 2023, we wrote,
“We wish to strongly emphasize that although we have initiated legal action against MCC via the CNESST, we are not seeking to harm MCC or to harm any individuals who work for MCC. On the contrary, we continue to deeply desire restoration through accountability and restitution of harms, the resolution of conflicts, and the restoration of broken interpersonal relationships. We hope to come to an agreement through non-litigious channels in which MCC makes restitution to us and others – both financially and otherwise – for the harm that has been done. We are not trying to destroy MCC’s work, or ruin MCC financially, or to seek vengeance for harms committed. Indeed, we do not believe that a just solution is likely to come about through the tools of the state, and we hope that MCC, as a ministry of the church, recognizes its accountability – as do we – to a much higher moral and ethical standard than that of the state.”
WHY WE CONTINUE TO PURSUE LEGAL ACTION
In our letter sent to the MCC boards on Oct 16, 2024, we take issue with MCC leaders’ public communications about us – such as the statement quoted above – that seem to imply that MCC is doing its best to meet with us, but is constrained by our litigious actions. We write:
“MCC is the one who first made legal threats to us in our termination letter, and we see our choice to submit complaints to CNESST as a way to pursue accountability for MCC in the case that it refuses to engage with us in a restorative way to fully address the legal, ethical and relational harm that has been done. Since submitting our grievance on Nov 3, 2023, our fear that MCC would seek to avoid taking responsibility for its actions has been more than amply justified. That is why we continue to pursue legal action, even as we also continue to invite MCC leaders to meet with us outside legal channels in order to discuss accountability, justice, and repair for harm done.”
We then go on to list the many occasions on which we invited MCC leaders to meet with us – both before and after we were fired. We list thirteen invitations in total, including six to the boards, and not counting the one in this letter.
Finally, we explain once again that
“When we declined to engage in the mediation option with the CNESST, we clearly explained to you in a Feb 28, 2024 email that we were declining because this mediation option was contingent on all parties signing a confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement, and because no admission of liability could be made in this process. We reiterated our invitation to you in that same email to meet outside this legal channel.”
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Currently, an Anabaptist organization in Europe is serving as a broker to help support the organization of a facilitated conversation between us and MCC board members to discuss our case. MCC has agreed to participate. That is a positive development. However, this conversation will likely focus only on our case. It is unclear what the exact scope of the conversation will be, or how it will intersect with the pending results of the internal third-party investigation that MCC initiated into our complaints – an investigate that we declined to participate in.
We are committed to having this conversation and seeing what good can come of it. However, as part of MAST, we are now aware of dozens of other cases of abuse. We are not going to be satisfied with anything less than transparent accountability, truth, and repair – not just for us but for the many others who have been harmed.
As we stated in the final paragraph of our letter to the boards:
“It should be clear to you by now that we are not looking for the kind of meeting that will allow us to come to a confidential settlement or to sweep what has happened under the rug. We are looking for transparent accountability, and we continue to believe that the MCC that we have long known and loved is capable of engaging with former employees in a way that is not focused on preventing legal liability but on getting to the truth and repairing harm.”
We continue to hope against hope that MCC boards will take appropriate action in response to these concerns.
If this post did not answer a question that you have, please feel free to ask it in the comments. We’ll do our best to respond.
This post first appeared on Facebook on October 18, 2024. See https://www.facebook.com/anicka.fast/posts/pfbid02xGtT1TXkDCw4cTFAt1XDEdkSeaKSAVSHubkfzHmkCWjijcs9wVunhRaWerwWUfbcl.