Disability from work doesn’t mean disability from life: NSGEU v. Nova Scotia (Public Service Commission), 2026 CanLII 69910

Dan Wilband, JD/BCL, MA

She quietly completed a degree while on LTD.

Her employer lost the case for firing her over it.

A Nova Scotia labour arbitrator has reinstated an employee who was terminated by the provincial Public Service Commission, based on an assumption the employer never actually tested.

For years, the employer had accommodated this employee through a serious and well-documented chronic pain condition, with a private office, adjustable lighting, ergonomic equipment, flexible breaks. When her condition progressed, she moved from short-term to long-term disability benefits, administered not by the employer but by a third-party insurer under the collective agreement.

While on LTD, the employee applied for and completed an intensive one-year journalism degree at the University of King’s College. She did not tell her employer or the insurer. The employer found out by chance, when a manager happened to see her cross the graduation stage.

Six months later, the employer terminated her. The reasoning seemed intuitive on its face: an employee too disabled to work should not be capable of completing an intensive academic program. The termination letter said as much, describing her degree as inconsistent with the restrictions on file and framing the inconsistency itself as a misrepresentation amounting to an irreparable breach of trust.

But the employer never called any evidence to establish that inconsistency. It simply assumed it. The only medical evidence actually before the arbitrator, from the employee's treating psychologist and occupational therapist, went the other way entirely. Her ability to attend school was not in tension with her restrictions. It was consistent with them: accommodations were made available and it was in fact treated as part of her rehabilitation plan toward returning to work. The employer’s intuition about what disability should look like turned out to be simply wrong on the facts.

There was a second critical problem. At the hearing, employer shifted ground, arguing that the failure to disclose university attendance was itself sufficient cause for discipline, regardless of whether the degree and her restrictions were actually inconsistent. Even if the employer were right about that, the arbitrator held that a collateral reason, introduced for the first time at the hearing, could not substitute for what the termination letter had actually said. An employee is entitled to know the case against her from the outset, not have it rebuilt once the file reaches arbitration.

There is also a jurisdictional point worth noting. The employer had no authority to dictate eligibility for long-term disability benefits. That authority belonged exclusively to the plan administrator. Whatever duty of disclosure the employee owed regarding her fitness for work, she owed it to the insurer, not to the employer directly.

Disability does not always look the way an employer expects it to. Acting only on assumptions in the termination letter, without the medical evidence to support them, is where this case was lost.

NSGEU v. Nova Scotia (Public Service Commission), 2026 CanLII 69910