CUB 67066

PAUL ROULEAU, Chief Umpire Designate

This is an appeal by the Canada Employment Insurance Commission from a decision of the Board of Referees which held that the claimant had just cause for voluntarily leaving her employment.

Ms. Harrison filed an application for employment insurance benefits on November 10, 2005 (exhibit 2). The Record of Employment submitted in support of the application indicated that the claimant was no longer working as she had quit her job as a purchasing manager with Accucaps Industries Limited in Windsor, Ontario (Exhibit 3). The claimant's explanation was that she had relocated from Windsor to Montreal in February 2005 in order to live with her partner. They were not married and did not have any children together. She continued to work for her employer on a consulting basis until June 2005 at which time the replacement her employer had found was ready to take over the job (exhibit 5).

Based on this information, the Commission determined that the claimant had voluntarily left her employment without just cause and it imposed an indefinite disqualification pursuant to sections 29 and 30 of the Employment Insurance Act, effective November 6, 2005 (exhibit 6). In the Commission's view, a reasonable alternative to leaving would have been for the claimant to keep her employment in Windsor until she found another job in Montreal.

The claimant appealed to a Board of Referees which allowed her appeal, stating its reasons, in part, as follows:

Following the appellant's testimony the Board is of the opinion that the appellant was in a stable relationship for the last two years. Both were traveling [sic] back and forth at least once a month to visit each other. As a result of this stable relationship the appellant was in a position as she arrived at Montreal to purchase a house with her partner, exchange wills with partner and established the type of financial arrangements common in a stable relationship.

The Board is of the view that the appellant is fully credible and the Board considers this relationship to be equivalent of a stable couple in the spirit of the Law.

Therefore the Board agrees with the appellant that she quit her job with just cause.

The Commission now appeals to an Umpire on the grounds that the Board erred in law when it concluded that the claimant had just cause for voluntarily leaving her employment. It maintains that the Board erred in law when it failed to make any finding of fact regarding whether the claimant had no reasonable alternative to leaving her employment when she did. Given that the claimant and her boyfriend had never lived together, it is the Commission's position and that were not common-law partners as defined in subsection 2(1) of the Employment Insurance Act and her situation therefore does not fall under subparagraph 29(c)(ii) of the Act.

I am not prepared to set aside the decision of the Board of Referees. When the claimant left Windsor in February 2005, she did not, in fact, leave her employment. On the contrary, she continued to work for her employer until June 2005 in accordance with consulting terms agreed upon in January 2005. Therefore, although the claimant relocated from Windsor to Montreal to live with her common-law spouse, she did not voluntarily leave her employment for that purpose. She relocated to Montreal and commenced residing with her partner but nevertheless continued to perform consulting work for her employer in Windsor. In the spring of 2005 she was approached by Univar Canada in Montreal. She registered in a French language immersion courses for the months of July and August 2005. She subsequently met with Univar Canada who unfortunately was unable to obtain the funding necessary to hire the claimant.

For these reasons, the Commission's appeal is dismissed.

Paul Rouleau

UMPIRE

OTTAWA, Ontario
November 16, 2006