May 5, 1992 - Olive Patricia Dickason

Human Rights a Day

Mandatory retirement reasonable, says Supreme Court of Canada. As a professor at the University of Alberta, Dr. Olive Patricia Dickason had signed a contract agreeing to the university’s employment terms. One of those terms dictated mandatory retirement at the age of 65. When she was showed the door at 65, however, Dickason didn’t want to go, so she took her case to the province’s human rights body. She won both there and on the case’s first appeal, but the Alberta Court of Appeal sided with the university. The Supreme Court of Canada heard Dickason’s case on May 5, 1992; five months later the majority of judges stated that while her equality rights had been violated, the mandatory retirement policy had been a reasonable limitation of those rights under the circumstances. Although professors are forced to retire, the court noted, they have tenure to ensure academic freedom, and to prevent them being fired for anything but just cause; that makes for a fair trade-off. Further, the court pointed out, universities need to be able to hire a steady stream of young new faculty to keep teaching and research fresh. Although some regarded the court’s decision as a slap in the face for older workers, the majority of Canadians were not clamouring to work past the age 65 regardless of the equality issues. Years after this decision, most provinces did away with mandatory retirement.