Toronto cop files $30M complaint against police association alleging it sided with sexual abusers

A Toronto Police constable is seeking millions in compensation from the association that represents officers, saying it refused to represent her during her years-long complaints of harassment as some people in association positions actively sexually harassed and assaulted her.

Const. Heather McWilliam is asking the Ontario Police Arbitration Commission to order the Toronto Police Association repay her for years of legal fees, travel expenses and other costs associated with fighting her claim on her own, as well as punitive damages that add up to over $30 million.

“It took a tremendous toll,” said McWilliam’s lawyer, Gary Bennett. “The Association representatives who should have been fighting grievances on her behalf — those were the people who were sexually harassing her or soliciting her for sex.”

“They were part of the problem,” Bennett said.

The Toronto Police Association hasn’t yet filed a response to McWilliam’s duty of fair representation complaint, and didn’t answer specific questions about the allegations when contacted by CTV News.

But the agency said that it has represented thousands of members across all types of complaints and has only ever received six duty of fair representation complaints like McWilliam’s, and none have been successful. It is responding to four of them now, with three of them relating to allegations of discrimination on sex or gender.

“All members deserve to come to work and be free from unwanted harassment or discrimination. We have a variety of processes that ensures all members… are represented fairly and provided with their entitlements set out in our collective agreements,” the TPA said in a statement.

Ontario’s Human Rights Tribunal found in 2020 that Const. McWilliam “experienced a poisoned work environment and that she experienced sexual harassment, including a forced kiss.”

The TPA is the bargaining agent for all members of the Toronto Police, and so almost all workplace issues must proceed through the association. The TPA can choose not to represent workers, but Ontario law says the decision can’t be arbitrary, discriminatory or bad faith.

Const. McWilliam’s complaint alleges the TPA has been all three, pointing to instances where association officials chose to represent the people she complained about but not providing resources to her. The complaint says TPA representatives made sexually charged comments about her body, and one sexually assaulted her during a parade in 2009.

In one case in 2011 or 2012, one superior officer propositioned her for a threesome, the complaint says, which she turned down, which had consequences for her career.

“Shortly after Const. McWilliam refused to have sex with her TPA representative, she was quickly eliminated from job opportunities in the Major Crime Unit at 23 Division,” the complaint says.

Another said, “She had better be nice to him and the guys in the TPA in case one day Const. McWilliam may need them because they only support financially those they know and like.”

Two of three “station duty representatives” had sexually harassed her in the past, the complaint says, alleging a failure to represent McWilliam was part of protecting other officers.

“This conflict of interest explains why the TPA did not take any steps to assist or represent Const. McWilliam. Const. McWilliam could not approach these TPA representatives for help…because they were the parties sexually harassing her,” the complaint alleges.

“The TPA representatives were a part of a toxic workplace culture that degraded women and discriminated against Const. McWilliam and other female officers and members of the community… the TPA supported Const. McWilliam’s abusers and preferred them over Constable McWilliam,” the complaint says.

Earlier this year, the Toronto Police Service made public a report that said harassment and discrimination are regular occurrences. Observers say that’s a start, but a general response needs to be combined with specific measures for individual offenders.

“If you want to stop violence, have a process in place that holds people accountable,” said Nicole Pietsch of the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres.

By 2014, Const. McWilliam went into hiding over what she called “mental torture”. Her complaint says she was forced to spend $750,000 in legal fees to advance her human rights application but the man she complained about didn’t have to spend anything because the association covered his fees.

She’s asking the Ontario Police Arbitration Commission to order the TPA to reimburse the $750,000 in legal fees, lost income and costs of therapies, as well as $35,000 for an alleged breach by the TPA, $10,000 for travel expenses, and $50,000 for general damages.

McWilliam is seeking punitive damages of $30,000,000  “on account of the mental torture and permanent health impairment she is forced to live with the for the rest of her life,” the complaint says.