Back in April 2013, we reported on a Human Rights Tribunal (the Tribunal) decision where a summary hearing was granted and an application was dismissed as having no reasonable prospect of success. A newly released decision involving a beauty pageant demonstrates the Tribunal’s increasing and welcomed use of the summary hearing mechanism. The case In Baksh v. Beauties of Canada et al., 2014 HRTO 1, Sandra Baksh (the Applicant) claimed discrimination after she was refused admission to a beauty pageant, allegedly because of her race and other similar grounds. The Tribunal on its own initiative considered a summary hearing application because “it appear[ed] that the applicant may be unable to prove a link to the ground or grounds alleged”. The Tribunal reiterated the test applied at a summary hearing: Is there a reasonable prospect of success? This is determined after assuming that an applicant’s version of events is true. The Tribunal also noted that: accepting the facts alleged by the applicant does not include accepting the applicant’s assumptions about why she was treated unfairly. The purpose of the summary hearing is to determine if reasonable inferences can be drawn from the facts or evidence the applicant is able to point to which tend to support the applicant’s belief that she has experienced discrimination.” In this case the Applicant was a black woman whose designer clothing store supplies dresses for beauty pageant contestants. One of the Respondents was Beauties of Canada (the Pageant), the organization that selects Canada’s representative at the […]