Former border officer sues CBSA over alleged interrogation after reporting sexual harassment
Posted November 22, 2019 3:41 pm.
Last Updated November 22, 2019 5:15 pm.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Disturbing claims have been filed against the Canada Border Services Agency by a former officer from Vancouver.
Former firearms instructor Jannelle Buchanan claims she was sexually harassed in 2016, and after she made a complaint, she says the employee retaliated by filing complaints about her, which the CBSA investigated. The harassment allegations resulted in a man’s dismissal.
Buchanan alleges CBSA agents Gregory Zbitnoff and Franca Passanante physically searched her and took her personal cell phone during what she calls an interrogation, accused her of lying, and read through her text messages and e-mails.
None of these claims have been proven in court.
In her civil claim, Buchanan says this has been left traumatized and depressed over the interrogation, and resigned in March of this year.
The employee who she claimed sexually harassed her is fighting the dismissal and is trying to be re-instated. The Customs and Immigration Union is apparently supporting this.
Employee retaliates, victim interrogated
After Buchanan made the initial sexual harassment complaint, she says the employee retaliated by filing complaints about her, which the CBSA investigated.
When she was brought in for an interview, she says she was detained and accused of having made threats against the CBSA. She was apparently searched and told once she was inside the interrogation area she couldn’t leave.
“The wrongful detention of the plaintiff, the seizure of her personal items and the assault were deliberate tactics by the individual defendants to cause distress to the plaintiff and gain a psychological advantage in the interrogation,” reads the complaint.
“The interrogation was abusive and not in keeping with the standard interrogation techniques employed by the CBSA when interrogating possible drug smugglers, let alone conducting an employee interview.”
It further claims the interrogation was meant to humiliate and intimidate Buchanan.
Allegations of inappropriate behaviour
The civil claim says that, in 2015, a male employee grabbed Buchanan’s hips from behind and thrust into her buttocks while whispering a sexual reference in her ear about him being a single man and her cooking.
A year later she made a formal complaint of sexual harassment and bullying against him, and was one of several women who made complaints.
According to Buchanan’s suit, this employee had a history of inappropriate behaviour toward female employees which was “plain to see” and that the “the CBSA took no steps to curtail the conduct.”
Despite his history, the claim argues several employees asked management to intervene between 2011 and 2016, but they dissuaded them from making formal complaints.
