CEDAW/C/51/D/19/2008
situation and her claims against it. This second suit was amended in July 1998 to include
applications for damages and interest on a number of different grounds, and a petition that
her title to half of the property and leasehold be recognized.
2.4
Various arrangements involving other dwellings or a financial settlement were
proposed to the author in an effort to resolve the situation in some way other than by
reinstating her title to one half of Parcel No. 138. Specifically, a financial settlement of
$15,000 was offered to the author in May 1999, and one of $20,000 was offered in 2001.
The author rejected these offers and instead chose to continue to attempt to recover title to
her share of the property, but she did not reactivate the second civil suit which she had filed
in 1996 and amended in 1998. That suit remained pending until 2003.
2.5
On 3 and 10 June 2003, respectively, the estate of W.S. and the Northwest
Territories Housing Corporation filed motions to dismiss the author’s two suits for ―want of
prosecution‖. On 27 October, the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories accepted the
application for the dismissal of the first action. The author did not contest the dismissal of
her first suit even though her complaints against her former partner and the various claims
that she had made had not been examined on the merits. The Canadian courts have
therefore not had the opportunity to consider the author’s complaints on the merits; nor did
the author provide information about her claims of discrimination. The author did, however,
lodge an application with the Court of Appeal for the Northwest Territories to overturn the
decision taken by the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories to dismiss her second
civil action for ―want of prosecution‖ on 3 November 2003. The Court of Appeal rejected
her application but did not issue its reasons for doing so in writing. The author did not
appeal that decision before the Supreme Court of Canada and did not apprise the Canadian
courts of the reasons why she did not or could not do so. Existing treaty body jurisprudence
indicates that, given the intended purpose of the requirement regarding the exhaustion of
domestic remedies, this procedural rule should not be overridden unless there are
compelling reasons for its waiver. The absence of a written reasoned decision from the
Court of Appeal cannot be regarded as such a reason. Unlike the Committee (para. 7.3 of
the communication), I do not think that an appeal before the Supreme Court of Canada
would be unlikely to bring effective relief to the author. Even if that remedy had given rise
to no more than a limited consideration of the procedural issue related to the author’s
inaction between, respectively, 1996/1998 and 2003, it could have led to a decision in the
author’s favour. If the Supreme Court of Canada had found that the five-year delay during
which the author had not taken any court action was excusable because, for example,
negotiations were being held between the author and the other parties during that period,
then the Supreme Court could have referred the case back to a lower court for an
examination of the merits. By failing to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, the author
precluded the consideration of her communication by the Committee, since she has not
exhausted the available domestic remedies. In my view, this first reason suffices to render
the communication inadmissible under article 1, paragraph 4, of the Optional Protocol.
2.6
The fact that a third legal action was brought does not make up for the author’s
failure to exhaust domestic remedies in connection with the second legal action. The author
did not take effective action to contest the court decision concerning her second suit under
the applicable rules of procedure. She therefore cannot, in my opinion, cite the third suit,
which had the same objective as the second, to rebut the argument that she failed to exhaust
domestic remedies in the second legal action, since to do so would render the requirement
that domestic remedies be exhausted — a requirement cited on numerous occasions by the
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