When Fairness Ends and Judgement Begins: What Carreau v. Canada Clarifies About Procedural Fairness in Workplace Investigations

By the time an investigator delivers a final report, the difficult part should already be over. The parties and witnesses should have been interviewed. The documents reviewed. The allegations put directly to those involved and responses obtained. Allegations and responses tested against the evidence. 

And yet that is often when uncertainty begins. 

A report arrives, conclusions are clear, and someone inside the organization starts to wonder whether one more round of submissions might make the process safer. More defensible. More fair. 

The instinct is understandable. It is also, as the Federal Court confirmed in Carreau v. Canada (Attorney General), 2025 FC 1537, not always consistent with the proper role of an investigator. In that case, the Court held that where parties had already been given notice of the case against them and a full opportunity to respond, fairness did not require the process to reopen after the report was complete. 

What Happened in Carreau 

An external investigator was retained to determine whether there had been a breach of the applicable Regulations and the employer’s Policy on Workplace Harassment and Violence Prevention. She completed the investigation, delivered her report, concluded that harassment had occurred, and made recommendations. 

The report was delivered to the employer as final. 

The employer then raised whether a further opportunity to respond should be provided and whether the report ought instead to be treated as preliminary, relying in part on two recent Federal Court decisions addressing fairness in investigations: Marentette v. Canada (Attorney General), 2024 FC 676 and Brown v. Canada (Attorney General), 2024 FC 823. 

The investigator refused. 

Her position was that both parties had already received what fairness required: notice of the allegations, disclosure of the substance of the case to be met, and an opportunity to respond to that case. She disagreed that fairness required a further opportunity to comment on findings already reached. Further submissions after a final report, she maintained, would compromise the integrity of the investigation she had been retained to conduct. 

That position did not change, despite months of pressure. 

The employer ultimately implemented her recommendations while expressing concern that the refusal might create a fairness issue. A responding party then sought judicial review. 

What the Court Clarified in Carreau 

The judgment draws a line that employers and counsel sometimes blur. 

Procedural fairness applies fully during the evidentiary phase of an investigation. A respondent must know the allegations, understand the substance of the case against them, and have a meaningful opportunity to answer it. 

But that entitlement does not continue indefinitely. 

The Court stated that the right to comment is strict at the stage of meeting the case against a party, but does not extend to the investigator’s ultimate conclusions and recommendations. It rejected the argument that fairness required post-report submissions simply because findings had become known. 

That distinction matters because many organizations still assume fairness means continued participation through every stage of the report itself. 

The Court said otherwise here. 

It also described post-conclusion intervention as inconsistent with the integrity of an independent, unbiased investigation process. Once the investigator reaches the deliberative stage, the task is no longer gathering information. It is weighing it. 

The Court’s comparison was pointed: that stage requires “no less serenity than a judge.” It added that exposing an investigator to attacks on their findings at that stage would be “antithetical to the very notion of an unbiased, neutral and impartial investigation.” 

The language is deliberate. 

It reflects something investigators understand in practice. Once the interviews are complete and the evidence is assembled, the work changes. That is often when pressure begins. 

Why the Carreau Decision Matters 

What Carreau recognizes is that independence becomes most vulnerable once findings stop being hypothetical. 

That is when institutional hesitation, legal caution, and the strongest objections from those affected by the outcome tend to surface. 

In externally retained investigations, the tension is obvious. The investigator is independent, but retained and paid by the employer. Where the responding party is senior and the findings carry professional consequences, that tension can sharpen further. 

The Court acknowledged that directly and treated it as a reason that independence must be protected rather than softened. 

The Practical Point 

If fairness concerns exist, they need to be addressed while the investigation is still underway. Not after the report is written, and not after findings are made. 

And not by asking an investigator to revisit conclusions because the final product has made someone uncomfortable. 

There comes a point when a workplace investigation has to end. Procedural fairness does not require continued back and forth once the parties have had a full opportunity to meet the case against them. At that point, the investigator must be left to decide.