University of Manitoba Religious Exemption Request of Faculty "denied"? Our response.

By Dor contributor, Bob

Your response is limited in its explanatory scope and the explicit clarification of evaluative standards used (criteria of evaluation). It is also based on a statement of assumed prima facie expertise of your legal counsel, which (expertise)  – according to your language and sentence structure – has to be taken as an absolute since ‘there is no appeal mechanism available for this decision’.  In essence, your legal counsel knows best when it comes to whom I am and what I believe in. Metaphorically speaking, you and your legal counsel stand above me and pronounce short judgments about me, my life, my family’s life, and my destiny. Spend a minute envisioning this metaphor.

You state: “The determination was that your exemption request be denied on this basis”. Please clarify what ‘this basis’ refers to. Does ‘this basis’ refer to (1) the expertness of your legal counsel, (2) your ‘dual obligations’ to (a) comply with human rights laws AND (b) to ensure a healthy and safe work environment?

If the phrase ‘this basis’ refers to ‘expert legal counsel’, your need to ‘comply with human rights laws’, and your commitment to ‘ensure a healthy and safe work environment’, then concrete explanations are needed to clarify each of these elements.

(1)   What is it about your legal counsel that confers upon them the status of being experts in issues of faith and religion? What concrete standards does your legal counsel use in determining a person’s faith and religion? How is it that your legal counsel has this elevated standing in judging a person’s faith and making pronouncements of ‘denial’ and ‘there is no appeal mechanism available for this decision’?  Please provide concrete answers to these questions.

(2a)  You state that you need to ‘comply with human rights laws’. The word ‘comply’ harbors metaphors of force and the need to submit to that force. A person ‘complies’ with something by force not through choice and free will. Instead, a phrase such as ‘we chose’ to follow human rights legislation because that legislation protects human rights would express an attitude different from what is conveyed by the word ‘comply’. The word ‘comply’ could, in certain contexts, be expressing an attitude of regret, as in we regret that we have to comply with this legislation, and we would not if we did not have to comply.

(2b) Please enumerate the human rights laws that you have used in evaluating my faith. Please provide concrete arguments using human rights legislation which (arguments) show that I don’t have a human right to my faith. Please provide concrete arguments (using human right legislation) on how your denial does not violate my human rights.

(2b) Your denial appears to also utilize the wording: ‘to ensure a healthy and safe work environment’. This appears to be one of your criteria in denying my request. Please explain whether this criterion is your only criterion in denying my request. Or, is your criterion for decision making based on your ‘dual obligation’ to comply with human rights legislation AND ensure a healthy and safe work environment? If your evaluation and final judgment is based on your ‘dual obligation’, then it surely involves some form of comparison of my human rights versus your ensuring a healthy and safe work environment. Please explain in concrete ways how my human rights compare to ensuring a healthy and safe work environment? How do you tally that comparison? What are the criteria for this comparison? How do my human rights weigh compared to ensuring a health and safe work environment? Is there a formula that weighs my human rights over against ensuring a healthy and safe work environment? If there is such formula, please explain this formula to me and how you have applied it in your process of deciding my denial. If there is no such formula, and if you cannot present it to me as a reasonable explanation for denying my request, then a reasonable person can entertain the following possible explanatory framework for your decision-making: You are one and we are many. The many are more than one. The many count more than one. Therefore, you are denied. Therefore, you are excluded. Therefore, you are eliminated.

Your criterion ‘to ensure a healthy and safe work environment’ appears to rest on two (2) assumptions. (1) One assumption is that those persons who have uploaded their qr code are healthy. (2) The second assumption is that those persons who did not upload their qr code are either not healthy and not safe to return to work or studying, and are a potential health risk to others. These two assumptions are medical assumptions that you make without concrete medical proof of health or sickness. Only medical doctors using medical know-how, evidence, and procedures, on a case-by-case basis could make a determination of health or sickness (And, medical doctors, in real-life settings can and have made mistakes as well.).

‘In dubio pro reo’ says that a defendant may not be convicted by a court when doubts about her/his guilt remain. If I am the defendant and you are the judge (or court of law), then you have, right off the bat, convicted me as being guilty, and you have therefore sentenced me to exclusion, loss of my job, loss of my income (no income means no ability to purchase food, pay bills; no income means the end of me and my family).

The legal truth is that a person is innocent until proven (with evidence and facts) guilty. Assumptions not based on evidence and facts are empty of content. When assumptions are empty of facts and evidence (of content), all these assumptions are nothing but psychological attitudes of fear, anger, resentment, and disgust.

I am assumed to be unhealthy and a threat to the many. I am assumed to be guilty of being a threat to many. That assumption is not based on evidence and facts. It is based on the fear of, and disgust towards, the contaminated who need to be kept at bay, pushed away, and, ultimately, exterminated (put on unpaid leave, fired). It is ok to be afraid and disgusted, but it is not ok to base ones actions and responses on no evidence and no facts.

A religious metaphor that comes to mind that would depict my experience with your process and your denial is this: It is Judgment Day. The Judge pronounces who is Good and who is Evil. The Good ones the Judge points to one side and the Bad ones the Judge points to the other side. The Good ones go to Heaven and keep their jobs. The Bad ones go to Hell and lose their jobs and perish. The Judge, having absolute power, uses few things as the criteria for his/her decision-making: (1) the Many are better the One, the Many are more important than the One, (2) the qr code is the ultimate criterion for deciding who is Good and who is Evil, (3) medical evidence and facts about health don’t matter, (4) the lives of employees and students don’t matter, (5) a person is guilty until proven innocent with an uploaded qr code, (6) compliance is Good and non-compliance is Evil, (7) the non-complying Evil ones are eliminated.

My experience with you and your process of denial and elimination I experience as the ultimate dehumanization of me, my life, my work effort, my accomplishments for the U of M over a quarter of a century.

I will keep all documentation and references related to exchanges with you for future reference.

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