Equal Leave, Unequal Impact

“Everyone gets the same benefit” sounds like the definition of fairness until you look at who gets squeezed when the rules change. We start with a Surrey teachers’ parental leave top-up dispute that has taken a surprising turn: adoptive parents argue that equal top-up pay can still be discriminatory because adoption can bring immediate, higher support needs for children, including trauma histories, disability, or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. We unpack how the policy evolved from older, birth-mother-only benefits, through earlier discrimination findings, and into a negotiated model where all new parents receive the same top-up. Then we dig into the key legal question now headed to the Human Rights Tribunal: can identical treatment create disproportionate harm that human rights law must address?

Next, we shift to criminal law and the rare reality of perjury charges. Michael Mulligan explains a case where a man, acquitted of manslaughter after a fatal one-punch incident, later pleaded guilty to perjury for lying under oath about whether his relationship had ended. We break down why courts treat perjury as so serious, how sentencing is assessed, and why the BC Court of Appeal upheld a 20-month jail term even where the lie might feel “peripheral.”

We close with consumer protection and the Competition Act concept of drip pricing, using the Honk Mobile parking app class action as a real-world example. Nearly a million people are part of the settlement, with an average claim around 35 cents, raising practical questions about notice, redemption by promo code, and whether small-dollar justice actually reaches consumers.

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Follow this link for a transcript of the show and links to the cases discussed. 

Transcript

Parental Leave Top-Ups Explained

Adam Stirling 0:22

What's happening here?

Michael Mulligan 0:24

Well, I I guess one way to sum it up would be sort of the uh toothpaste uh tube getting squeezed around in different places in terms of uh top-ups paid uh to different kinds of parents uh when they uh have a new child. Um and the particular background uh of this case uh is uh a claim brought by uh two teachers who are both employed apparently for a long period of time uh in a uh uh the Surrey school district, uh, and they had a big family, lots of children uh in total, uh in this case involved uh the adoption of their ninth child. So wow, that's a busy household. Um and the underlying issue here uh is one involving uh who should be entitled to uh a uh financial top-up uh that would be available to you to supplement uh the amount of money you might be getting uh from the government when you're going on leave when you're either having a child or adopting a child. Uh and the the case actually, the uh the origin of how this uh thing came to be uh dates all the way back to 2012 when there was a uh complaint brought by a um uh father, actually back to 1998, even earlier, 1998.

How A 1998 Complaint Changed Policy

Michael Mulligan 1:43

And it was a uh claim brought at that time by a birth father who uh made a complaint about uh being discriminated against on the basis that mothers would get this top-up when they were taking leave after the birth of a child, but fathers would not. Um and uh that was found to be discriminatory, and it led to uh some changes, including changes to the eventually the collective agreement for the teachers in the Surrey School District. Um, and so they extended uh benefits to other groups other than uh mothers who gave birth to children to include fathers and adopted parents, uh all fine as far as it went. Uh but uh the uh benefits that were being provided were benefits that were really a function of the terms of the collective agreement between the teachers uh and uh their employer. Uh and the uh the issue that uh uh then arose was the fact that there were different categories of benefits you could get. There were benefits that would be provided to uh birth mothers, like you would get some time off while pregnant or giving birth, and then there would be this additional time that would be provided if you were an adoptive parent or a father, for example, uh taking time off. Um and the uh uh these parents, the particular ones who brought the claim, had made uh uh had take gotten uh benefit from uh this top-up uh as a result of the number of children uh they had had uh given birth to or adopted over the years. Um and eventually uh the uh there came a uh complaint uh about uh the uh fairness uh of having uh different amounts of uh leave available when somebody was uh a uh uh father or an adoptive parent uh versus uh a mother who was having the child and then taking time off. Uh and the uh decision about that uh wound up uh being that it was uh not fair to have uh different amounts of uh time provided

When Equal Benefits Reduce Payments

Michael Mulligan 3:52

to people in those different categories. That conclusion wound up going all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, um, who eventually uh sent it back uh to be dealt with as a matter of negotiation between the um uh teachers and their employer. And the outcome of that uh was to uh give everyone the same amount uh of top-up, regardless of whether you were an adoptive parent or uh you were a mother giving birth or you were a father, everyone would get the same. Uh and that uh that decision eventually got implemented uh when this uh couple uh had uh adopted their ninth child. Uh and to their surprise, uh they found they wound up getting less of a top-up. Basically, what happened uh is that everyone got uh entitlement to the same thing, but less, right? That's what I mean by say the toothpaste tube. There's only so much, I guess, money to be negotiated and spread around. And so when a decision came that everyone should get the same, uh it meant for some people they got less. Uh and so the particular challenge brought in this case is a challenge brought uh by these parents in the context of having adopted a child, uh, and the complaint is that they are now being discriminated uh against because uh there are particular challenges associated with being an adoptive parent. And so they pointed to uh the fact that, and there's some evidentiary basis for this, that uh many children uh who are adopted uh have uh particularly ch children that are adopted, perhaps not at birth, uh can have a number of uh challenges. There's like a higher rate of, for example, uh children who are adopted happening to have fetal alcohol syndrome or uh might have experienced uh some uh abuse in their uh early days before they wind up being adopted. And so the claim from the parents here is premised on uh the idea that uh it amounts to being discriminatory against adoptive parents by treating them the same as

Adoptive Parents Argue Unique Needs

Michael Mulligan 5:55

parents uh who uh are uh not adopting. Uh and so that unique uh claim uh took the form uh of a human rights uh tribune human rights complaint saying treating us all the same, that is to say, adoptive parents treating us the same way uh as parents who are uh not adopting uh is itself discriminatory. And so the unique argument is that. The argument is uh treating everyone the same is discriminatory. There should be additional time, uh provided in this case they're arguing for adoptive parents. Uh and they frame that uh human rights complaint uh in various different ways, and the uh human rights tribunal uh summarily dismissed um several parts of how that claim was uh uh uh articulated, uh, but uh allowed it to proceed uh on uh one of the grounds, which was the basis uh that I've just indicated, that there was a disproportionate harm to adoptive parents by giving them effectively the same amount as what other people would get. Uh the school board, the Surrey School District, appealed uh the decision to allow uh even uh that part of the claim to go ahead, arguing this really isn't a human rights, proper human rights complaint, arguing well everyone's just being treated the same. How can that possibly be

Court Allows Tribunal Hearing Ahead

Michael Mulligan 7:18

discriminatory? And so that's the decision that uh just went to the BC Supreme Court, uh uh which uh has uh just decided that it is not as clear as all that that there is a uh at least an arguable uh claim to be made that treating everyone the same way could itself be discriminatory. They haven't decided that so, uh, but uh they uh agreed that it was appropriate to allow that to go to a human rights tribunal hearing, and so that's what's now going to occur. And so we've moved from a circumstance uh where a number of years ago adoptive parents and fathers would get uh no top-up at all, uh, to a circumstance in which everyone in all these categories is receiving effectively the same thing. Uh, but uh the argument now uh is that that itself is discriminatory because of the particular needs of adoptive parents. Uh and so on that very interesting fact pattern, uh the judge has uh directed that that uh shouldn't simply be struck out as having no chance of success. Uh and so we will uh now go back and await the decision uh from the Human Rights uh Commission to determine or tribunal to determine uh whether it is in fact discriminatory to treat everyone, all these kinds of new parents, the same way.

Perjury After A Manslaughter Trial

Adam Stirling 8:36

Michael Mulligan with Mulligan Defense will continue right after the fact that illegally continues Michael Mulligan with Mulligan Defense. Michael is a 20 month jail for perjury in a manslaughter trial upheld on appeal. What happened?

Michael Mulligan 8:56

Well, this case uh involved a, as he's mentioned, a uh perjury charge, which I should say at the outset are rare, right? It is not rare in uh criminal cases to by the end of the uh trial have a conclusion that uh some of the witnesses were not uh truthful, but it is uh rare uh that they actually be a charge of perjury. Now the background of this case is interesting. This was a fellow who back in uh 2019 had a trial. Uh he was himself charged with manslaughter. Uh and it was one of these cases involving a punch uh of a uh person outside a nightclub, in this case in Kamloops, uh, and the person punched uh died, right? And that uh does happen from time to time. He was charged, and at his trial he chose to testify. And he testified at his trial, it was a jury trial, uh, that he was acting in defense of his then girlfriend when he struck the person uh who died. Uh the jury obviously accepted that, or at least had a reasonable doubt about it, uh, because they acquitted him ultimately of the uh manslaughter charge. But the evidence in question arose in cross-examination when Crown Counsel was uh asking him about uh his relationship with the uh uh then girlfriend whom he said he was uh acting in defense of. Uh and he claimed for reasons unexplained uh that his relationship with her had uh ended shortly after this uh event when the truth of the matter was that it had not ended, uh, and that he continued to have contact with her by telephone and including physical and other uh contact uh with her. And so it's on that basis that he was charged with perjury in 2026, alleging that he lied when he said the relationship was over in cross-examination. He interestingly pled guilty to that uh charge, which I should uh just a small diversion, one of the reasons why perjury charges uh may not be that common is that the crown would then have to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the person was intentionally lying uh when they testified about something. But in this case, apparently the guy had made comments about that in other contexts, and so the crown thought they had a basis to do it, charged him and he pled guilty.

Why Courts Treat Perjury Severely

Michael Mulligan 11:08

The tr the judge then, uh sentencing him on the perjury charge, took into account uh a number of factors in a case called uh Jordan, it's an Alberta uh Court of Appeals uh decision, uh, that sets out things a judge or to think about when deciding how serious perjury is, because as you might imagine, there's a range of these things. They include these things. How serious was the offense the person was perjuring themselves about? You know, is this a speeding ticket or a murder charge, right? How serious is the offense? Did the perjury have an effect on the outcome of the trial? That's of course hard to know in a jury case because you don't ever get reasons from the jury, right? And it's not a case where uh it was sort of perjury about something directly related to it, sort of a peripheral uh element here. So that's a consideration. Whether the testimony formed a vital part of the evidence, that's sort of tied up in that uh last thing, the effect. Uh the other consideration uh is whether the perjury implicated an innocent person in a crime. That's considered to be more serious. If you lie and claim somebody else did something, uh, you know, maybe trying to get them convicted, for example, that can be an aggravating factor. And then finally, whether the perjury was planned and deliberate, sort of similar language to first-degree murder. Like if you plan this all out or it just got to happen on the quick. Here, the uh judge found, amongst other things, that uh this must have been uh aggravating because he said these various things repeatedly. They were brief, but repeated various claims in his cross-examination about uh having this relationship having ended. And the judge sentencing on the perjury charge gave this man 20 months in prison. Perhaps not that far off of where he might have landed had he been convicted of some, you know, one-punch uh assault that landed in a tragic death. So he gets 20 months, and he appeals that to the Court of Appeal. And so the decision that just came out uh just a few days ago was the BC Court of Appeal that ultimately upheld the 20-month jail sentence, uh, bearing in mind uh those lists of various factors that are to be considered, and bearing in mind the broad principle when there's a uh sentence appeal, it's not a matter of the uh Court of Appeal doing whatever they think they might have imposed, but it's really an assessment as to whether the what's the sentence what the uh sentence imposed was that sort of outside the range was sort of a completely inappropriate sentence rather than one that they might necessarily have come to the same conclusion about. Uh and so the Court of Appeal on that sort of deferential basis upheld this 20-month sentence. And so I thought it was a case worth commenting on, both because perjury charges are not common, uh, and to give listeners a sense of just how seriously uh the uh justice system treats those things uh when they are able to prove them. Uh I must say in that regard, I've been doing what I do a very long time. All I do is criminal uh defense work. Uh and uh, you know, there have been over the years uh multiple circumstances where judges have made determinations that, for example, a complainant is uh telling an untrue story. I can think of no examples uh where the crown in response to that has charged a complainant with perjury. And so uh it's uh interesting that on this uh this sort of perhaps sort of peripheral detail about the nature of the relationship after uh the event occurred, uh, that they uh saw fit to charge uh this person uh who then ultimately pled guilty. But it gives you an idea of just how seriously the criminal justice system does take it uh when there's a conviction uh of that kind, because of course people coming to court and lying uh can uh seriously uh impact uh how things play out. So I guess the takeaway there is tell the truth, uh, even on peripheral uh things. And if you don't, the consequences like for this man uh can be very, very serious.

Drip Pricing Under Canada’s Competition Act

Adam Stirling 14:56

All right. I'm reading here it's a settlement of claim against something called Honk Mobile for adding service fees not disclosed in the initial price approved. What's all this about?

Michael Mulligan 15:07

So this is really interesting. So Honk Mobile is like a mobile platform that apparently you can use to pay for parking, amongst other things. Um, and it apparently is relatively popular because part of the one of the stats here was that there were some 992,400 class members, like people who would use this thing over a period of time to pay for parking. Uh and the class action was premised on uh uh what uh was alleged to have been a breach of some of the provisions of the Competition Act, which is federal legislation in Canada. And the Competition Act one of the things it does is it prohibits false and misleading uh like advertising, right? Uh and one of the things which it expressly prohibits is a concept called drip pricing, which listeners should become aware of. Uh and it says this for greater certainty, the making of a representation of a price that is not attainable due to a fixed obligatory charges or fees constitutes a false or misleading representation, unless the obligation uh obligatory charges or fees represent only an amount imposed on the purchaser of the product uh by operation of under section of an act of parliament or a legislature of a province. The last bit are taxes, by the way, right? You don't if somebody advertises a price but doesn't say plus GST or something, you wouldn't be in breach of this uh uh provision. But what it would prohibit are things like um, you know, let's say uh a hotel advertises uh nights for $199. You great, I'll take it. You show up there, you book it, and then they say, Oh, by the way, there's a resort fee. That wasn't in the advertising, you must pay $25 as a resort fee. That could amount to drip pricing and be unlawful under the Competition Act. So bringing us to this particular case, this honk mobile uh app thing allows you to pay for stuff like parking. Uh and when you start paying for the parking, what happened is there was a fee added in uh which you could not possibly get out of in order to pay for parking. And so the claim was premised on, hey, you misled all these people about how much parking cost uh in violation of the Competition Act, and that was a basis for the class action claim, which got certified. Um and the uh claim then uh, as I mentioned, involved a lot of people. This uh almost a million people in Canada. Now, this I suppose on one level is an example of why it's a good thing we have class action litigation, uh, because the amount that people may have been out was just like a matter of, I think, 35 cents right on average. Not much. Uh, and very few people are gonna sue over, you know, thirty-five cents. Uh but uh the lawyers who took this thing on, took it on, uh and then uh engaged in the arbitration process uh and eventually were able to get a settlement out of Honk Mobile.

Honk Mobile Settlement And Claim Codes

Michael Mulligan 18:05

Uh and they got Honk Mobile to agree to the settlement of it was a total of four hundred and sixty-three thousand dollars, minus things like some of the legal expenses and an honorarium and so on for the representative plaintiff. Uh and that led to this uh having to go for approval of a judge to approve this settlement. Uh you might be one of the million people. Uh and when you settle a class action, a judge has to review it to make sure that it's uh fair and reasonable uh because it affects all these people. Um and this case had a number of interesting bits about it. One was that large number of people involved. Another interesting thing was that they were quite readily able to notify them all of the claim uh and ultimately the settlement proposal because of the online nature of this service. Uh and so the uh company, Honk Mobile, uh, had email addresses for people, and so they were able to email 90% of the people involved. Uh now another interesting stat, I mean, this tells you how much people pay attention to their email, uh, less than 15% of the people that were notified by email opened the email to look at it. But nonetheless, that's okay. You don't need to succeed in notifying absolutely everyone. You there's no way to force everyone to read their email about a potential settlement. Uh, but that was pretty good. Uh and of that uh large number, interestingly, uh, and this is part of the settlement process, people can choose to opt out, like to say, no, I want to be able to sue myself. Ninety-two people opted out, which is a bit of a bit of a head scratcher. I'm not sure how many people are starting their own small claims action over 35 cents, but there we are. Two people objected to it, which is another thing that's permissible. One person objected that this wasn't a sufficient penalty for breaking the law. That didn't get much traction because the civil claims over money not punishing people. The other person who complained about it had a thoughtful uh comment because of how these rebates were going to be sent out, what's gonna happen is that the honk people are gonna send out promo like codes, individual uh codes, which people can type in to get the 35 cents. But if they don't type them in and use them by, I think, January, it just they it's that's over, they don't get the 35 cents. Uh and so the second objection was thoughtful, saying, well, hold on, why didn't you just like add this to their account? Because many people aren't going to go through the process. Only 15% of people even open their email for heaven's sakes. How many people are really gonna claim their 35 cents? The judge pointed out that that's reasonable, but the company says their infrastructure, the app doesn't allow for that, and the task of a judge isn't to figure out what the best possible settlement could have been, or to monkey around with it, is to determine whether what was uh resolved here was reasonable uh in all the circumstances. And on that threshold, the judge agreed, yes, it was. Uh and so if you happen to use Honk Mobile, you may want to go to your junk file, open it up, uh, and get your code uh if the that effort is worth the 35 cents, uh, and we'll have to wait and see what the other 92 people do, uh, whether they're trying to get more out of Honk Mobile uh for the uh drip pricing claim. So that's the Competition

Final Takeaways And Wrap-Up

Michael Mulligan 21:10

Act, drip pricing, uh, and the uh latest approval of a settlement for people that pay too much for parking.

Adam Stirling 21:15

Michael Mulligan with Mulligan Defense Lawyers, legally speaking, during the second half of our second hour every Thursday. Thank you so much. Pleasure as always. Thanks so much. Always great to be here. All right, quick break back after this.