Marie-Helene Tougas, PIPSC General Counsel
July 31, 2024
Sherry Oake
Cheney, ON
Via email:
Dear Ms. Oake,
Re: Cease and Desist
Some concerns were brought to our attention pertaining to your numerous messaging on social media.
More precisely, on July 26 2024, you indicated to Tania Lafrenière, PIPSC Executive director that you were
acting as a steward for a member and you posted on the Accountability and Transparency Facebook
page personal information concerning that member for the matter for which you are acting on.
It is not our intention to claim that you are not allowed to express yourself. It's our duty to remind you
that there's an important difference between expressing an opinion and making targeted accusations on
a social media platform. It is a matter of concern that, as a steward and a member, you neglected to
make this important difference.
I have read your comments and, while we understand that the news of Ms. Carr's leave of absence has
prompted your reactions that you wish to express, it must be said that the tone and content of many of
them are highly accusatory. Not only against the decision of the Institute's Board of Directors, but also
against individual Board members. It is our position that many of your postings on this Facebook page
are defamatory, disparaging and derogatory towards the Institute and also Breach the confidentiality by
relying on personal matters information about a member you are representing.
What's more, as a PIPSC steward of the Ontario Region, you're acting in a way that's unacceptable. In
your role, you act as an ambassador for PIPSC and are bound by the Institute's Conduct Policy, the
application of which may be triggered by accusatory remarks. When acting as a steward, the
information on a case is confidential between you and who you are representing. Those details shall not
be shared through media during representation. Your comments and accusations are unacceptable to the parties involved, the officers of the organization you accuse, in addition to tarnishing the image of
the Institute.
You are hereby given notice to immediately cease and desist from making derogatory statements that
are not only breaching the confidentiality of the parties involved but also tarnishing the Institute and its
officers and to immediately remove your Facebook posts.
Regards,
Marie-Helene Tougas
PIPSC General Counsel
Cc: Tania Lafreniere, Executive Director
Eva Henshaw, A/ President
Dear Ms Tougas,
Reference: A. Your letter “Re:Cease and Desist”, dated 31 July 2024
B. Application Record of the Applicant Jennifer Carr, Exhibit K, 21 May 2024, (your letter to
Ms. Carr, Re: Directives on Administrative Leave with Pay, dated 11 April 2024)
I received your letter at reference A above today at approximately 1430 hours when I happened
to check my personal email account during my late lunch.
I am writing for several reasons in response to your communication.
Firstly, please note that I removed the Facebook post that you refer to from 26 July 2024.
Secondly, I want to clarify why I contacted Ms. Lafreniere on Friday 26 July. Please note that
Ms. Carr had received communication from the Institute regarding the audit being conducted on
claims that her office had made, as well as some personal reimbursements, on the evening of 25
July 2024. Included was this statement:
“We request that the clarifications be provided by July 30 2024. For your convenience, a
pre-paid reply envelope has been included.”
Ms. Carr was in an impossible situation as placed by the Institute, to provide any response in any
timeframe, when, in an electronic format, no physical envelope was provided! Nor indeed even
the supporting documentation (attachments) that appeared to have assumed to be sent.
As you well know from your letter of 11 April 2024, (which I was aware of, having read the
public Court documents at reference B) that you have banned Ms.Carr from contacting anyone at
the Institute except yourself and Ms. Lafreniere, and only under certain conditions. I refer to the
following paragraphs of your own letter:
Given our previous warnings, the Board of Directors is directing you as follows:
● You are to maintain confidentiality with respect to the complaints/ investigations
at all time this includes, but is not limited to taking down your Facebook post;
● You are not to communicate with Staff, except the Executive Director with
respect to matters relating to your employment or leave, and with myself for
matters related to the investigation into allegations of misconduct;
● You are not to communicate with staff for any purpose other than what is listed
above. If you fail to comply with this direction, you email access will be revoked;
and,
● You are not to access any PIPSC office, included but not limited to the PIPSC
building at 250 Tremblay in Ottawa.
The measures will remain in place until further notice.
Regards,
Marie-Hélène Tougas
A/General Counsel
This audit is neither “employment” nor “leave”. The audit letter is signed by the Finance
Director. Please note that your own direction above, which remains extant, prohibits Ms. Carr
from even replying to the sender of the email to advise them that there were no attachments, nor
envelope.
I am not Ms. Carr’s legal representative in this matter. She has a lawyer who is a member of the
Bar in Ontario that is in contact with the Institute to represent her legal interests.
My sole interest was to act as Ms. Carr’s personal messenger, to convey the information to Ms.
Lafreniere or other staff, that the communication from the Institute was flawed and missing
relevant and pertinent information. The Institute itself imposed the short timeline for response,
thus there was urgency in notifying the originator that there were omissions. This was a good
faith gesture of Ms. Carr, that I urged her to make, and I undertook, to notify the Institute of its
own administrative shortcomings.
Considering the content of your letter to me (Reference A), if I understand your position, Ms.
Carr is an employee of the Institute and therefore not subject to having steward representation as
a union member, for an elected Executive position. In my past Steward activities for members, I
have often had to interact with management for minor administrative issues, even though there
may be legal counsel involved in the case. If this has somehow caused upset and offence, then I
do apologize for attempting to address the administrative errors of the Institute. The error then is
mine.
Please note however, that I am a member of the National Capital Region and not the Ontario
Region as claimed in your letter.
Thirdly, I wish to address your paragraph in your letter:
I have read your comments and, while we understand that the news of Ms. Carr's leave of
absence has prompted your reactions that you wish to express, it must be said that the
tone and content of many of them are highly accusatory. Not only against the decision of
the Institute's Board of Directors, but also against individual Board members. It is our
position that many of your postings on this Facebook page are defamatory, disparaging
and derogatory towards the Institute and also Breach the confidentiality by relying on
personal matters information about a member you are representing.
I vehemently disagree that any of my comments on Facebook in a closed (non-public) forum that
has no official affiliation with the Institute, or on my personal pages which is also a closed (non-
public) account should be of any official concern to the Institute or yourself as General Counsel.
If any member of the Board is troubled by my postings, then they are free to engage with me
personally by email, by FB Messenger or other means. I want to note that I have never solicited
Facebook “Friends” to become “Friends”. For personal family reasons I have kept my personal
account locked away from being public, and I have many friends from my many interests and
activities. PIPSC is only one of approximately seven organizations I have recently worked with,
including United Nations and NGO groups, as well as organizations devoted to my personal
interests. If anyone on the Board is troubled by my personal postings then they are quite free to
“Unfriend” me, as I did not reach out to them in the first place.
I further note that it was most certainly not “the news of Ms. Carr's leave of absence” that “has
prompted (the) reactions that (I) wish to express”. It was the contents of the court documents
including the affidavits, exhibits, cross-examinations, and witness testimony that became
available after the Court hearing on 24 June 2024, that has prompted my reactions. If Board
members find my observations and analysis of the sworn documentation to be “highly
accusatory”, or “defamatory, disparaging and derogatory”, then I urge them to read the same
documents in full detail. If Board members are frustrated that I may not have the full story, then
I refer them to the legal process that allowed them to submit their own affidavits if they saw fit,
and that gave each of them the opportunity to submit Exhibits to support their (individual) case.
I remind you that in November 2023, that “the Whistleblower” letter was sent to many parties,
including the entire Advisory Council. I too received a copy that day and read its contents.
Therefore, there is no “confidentiality” to breach of a person I am not representing, of documents
that are public record, that stem from a letter of multiple accusations made of Ms. Carr that was
sent to hundreds of people.
Fourthly, I note that you are concerned with the tarnishing of the Institute and its officers. It is
my personal opinion that, sadly, there has been reputational damage to the Institute, but this has
been done by the ill-conceived devices of the officers and directing minds that placed Ms. Carr
on a leave of absence after complaints were submitted by those same officers after openly
discussing this at the Board meeting of December 2023. This is in the cross-examination
testimony. Further, I note that there is reputational damage to the Institute when one of those
complainants (whose identity is redacted) knowingly sat next to Ms. Carr at a meeting with a
fixed seating plan and then submitted a follow-up complaint that she sat next to him. This too is
in the cross-examination. Thus, in one short paragraph here I note documented and sworn events that could be perceived as collusion and entrapment. I hope that we can agree that these are not
values that the Institute ought to be placing in high regard.
In conclusion, I thank you for your letter sent today. It confirms to me that the directing minds
of the Institute are overly concerned with the personal opinions of a simple member who
currently is not on any serving executive and has zero power over anything the Institute does. If
these persons do not wish to read what I post, then they are welcome to block, unfriend,
disengage, and unfollow my personal Facebook account and the one of a social group that is not
formally affiliated with the Institute. Of course, if they wish to engage community members, and
post constructive, positive comments about their activities, successes, and efforts on behalf of
members, then that is also their choice.
If I have misunderstood any of your positions, then I welcome further correspondence to
improve my understanding. Although I am not a lawyer, I have served in leadership roles in
many different types of organizations.
If you require any of the references I refer to above in this letter, please advise me so that I may
send them. I am assuming that you have these and are familiar with the contents that I discussed.
I hope that this letter has clarified aspects of my continued efforts for administrative competence
and professionalism of the organization that I am required by law to contribute to financially.
Kind regards,
Sherry Oake
