CUB 57194

A. Gobeil, Umpire

The claimant is appealing a decision by a Board of Referees that upheld the decision made against her by the Commission, which wrote to the claimant on August 6, 2001 in these words:

"[TRANSLATION] We wish to inform you that we cannot pay you regular benefits starting July 1, 2001, as you quit your job with Centre de santé Vallée-de-d'Or on July 1 voluntarily without just cause. In our opinion, leaving your job voluntarily was not the only reasonable solution in your case."

In this matter, the status of spouse within the meaning of the Employment Insurance Act is not being challenged, or is the fact that she quit her job in Val d'Or voluntarily to follow her husband to Lac Saguay.

The evidence shows that the claimant's husband was employed by the Centre Jeunesse de Val d'Or, but his position was abolished. With severance equivalent to two years' pay, he attempted to find a new job as an electrician. As there were no openings in the Val d'Or area, he decided to move to the Laurentians, where the job market looked more favourable. His wife quit her job and followed him to Lac Saguay, where they bought a house.

In their decision, the members of the Board of Referees used these words:

"[TRANSLATION] First of all, the Board realized that the appellant's husband was not retired: he was on the job stability program for health and social services network officials and could avail himself of the job replacement measures provided by the Regulations. There was no more work in Lac Saguay than in Val d'Or when he decided to relocate. As for the appellant, she would have had her income protected to retirement age if her position had been abolished. Accordingly, her job insecurity is not relevant to the case."

Taking all of the evidence in the docket into account, the Board finds the appellant and her husband had every right to choose their place of residence, but this was a personal choice with costs that do not have to borne by society as a whole.

For these reasons, the appeal is unanimously disallowed."

We are clearly in the situation described in subparagraph 29(c)(ii) of the Employment Insurance Act, which reads as follows:

"just cause for voluntarily leaving an employment or taking leave from an employment exists if the claimant had no reasonable alternative to leaving or taking leave, having regard to all the circumstances, including any of the following:

1. ...
2. obligation to accompany a spouse, common-law partner or dependent child to another residence."

No doubt the claimant's decision to follow her husband was "personal," but she could not be blamed for it if, after we have weighed all the circumstances in which this decision was made, it appears to have been the only reasonable solution in her case.

The members of the Board of Referees therefore committed an error in law by considering the claimant's decision to have been without just cause for the sole reason that it was "personal," without raising the matter of its "reasonableness."

Moreover, I see as irrelevant the inference made by the Board of Referees that the claimant's husband was not forced to move and his decision was described as "personal." It is precisely because the husband was entitled to make a personal, independent and responsible decision about his future that he cannot be reproached for it.

What has to be remembered is that this decision constituted a matter of fact that led the claimant to make the choice to quit her job voluntarily and go with him. The husband's decision was therefore the one that "especially" put the claimant in the situation described in subparagraph 29(c)(i) of the Act. This is the main and central circumstance to consider first. Here, it cannot be challenged. There is now reason to consider other circumstances that characterized the move. The evidence shows it was not temporary: they bought a house at Lac Saguay. This was not the result of a whim: it was part of a wholly legitimate back to work plan by the husband.

For the claimant, the decision to follow her husband took circumstances into account that she described to the Board of Referees and prompted her to consider her job insecurity. She believed she could find another job in the Laurentians. The members of the Board of Referees erred in not recognizing the legitimate ambition to keep working (like her husband) in the event of losing her job despite the income protection she would be guaranteed in such case, although no evidence was produced to say whether this guarantee came with conditions and, if so, what they were. The members of the Board of Referees were silent as to what evidence enabled them to assert the existence of the guarantee in question.

These are circumstances the Commission and Board of Referees neglected to consider when determining whether the claimant's leaving her job was the only reasonable solution in her case, not to overlook the special conditions of the husband's status.

It strikes me as obvious that the lawmaker wanted to deal with the situation of spouses in a special way owing to the nature of the permanent, stable relationship that should exist between them, with cohabitation an essential component. In assessing the circumstances surrounding the decision to quit a job to go with a husband, the failure to take this aspect into account, which in reality is complex, may create an abusive power by giving the Commission authority to rule on matters that often directly involve the privacy of the persons concerned and decide, for example, on the limits of the inconvenience a couple can tolerate without danger of breaking apart. Thus, the reasons prompting someone to quit a job to follow a spouse, seeing this as the only reasonable solution in her case, should be beyond strict government control and be given a broad and liberal interpretation inasmuch as this decision occurs in a generally serious and reasonable setting, as seems to me to be the case here.

As a result of the preceding, the claimant's appeal is upheld.

Albert Gobeil

Umpire

Montreal, Quebec
February 18, 2003.