Image Credit: Shutterstock

A former Osoyoos Indian Band employee took the First Nation to court after it replaced her while on leave, then refused to tell her about it.

Melinda Nunez-Shular was the Band's first tax administrator and held the job for a decade when she faced resistance and lies upon her return from stress leave in 2019, according to a recent BC Supreme Court decision.

The Band even refused to give over crucial evidence to the court which would have shown exactly when Nunez-Shular was officially replaced by the human resource manager's sister.

Though Nunez-Shular was never officially fired, Justice Miriam Gropper awarded Nunez-Shular $50,000 in damages, along with payment for 24 months' notice. Her salary was around $54,000 per year before her departure, according to the March 19 ruling.

Gropper said the Band's conduct was "unfair and in bad faith by being untruthful, misleading and unduly insensitive" toward her before Nunez-Shular eventually left the office in tears for the final time.

READ MORE: How Kelowna crime compares to other US and Canadian cities

The sequence of events that led to her 2019 departure from Osoyoos Indian Band started more than two years earlier when she took a medical leave due to emergency surgery. Before her return two months later, human resources director Leona Baptiste posted a job opportunity for a tax administrator trainee.

The job never existed before and Nunez-Shular, who normally would have had a role in planning for the new role, was excluded from the discussion entirely.

Concerned she would be replaced, Chief Clarence Louie assured Nunez-Shular in October 2017 the new hire would be a "floater" to help her during the busy tax season, and Baptiste's sister Alanea Holmstrom was hired later that month.

Holmstrom, however, was never told she was to work below Nunez-Shular. Gropper found the new hire was under the impression she was an equal.

Tensions arose in the office and Holmstrom levied multiple complaints about Nunez-Shular. The substance of those complaints isn't clear in the decision, nor were they ever made clear to her. Despite her requests, Nunez-Shular was never provided with the complaints so she could respond.

By March 2018, Nunez-Shular left on stress leave. Her doctor refused to give Chief Louie a letter outlining details of her medical condition, but he told the court Nunez-Shular showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, making it difficult to work.

Nunez-Shular returned to work a year later and though he tried, her rehabilitation consultiant got no response from Osoyoos Indian Band staff as he tried to arrange a progressive return to work plan.

READ MORE: Disbarred Kamloops lawyer's lawsuit dismissed over delays

She came back to Holmstrom using her workspace and was given a temporary table to work from instead, assigned to menial filing work. After some effort by her rehab assistant, she was given a small desk with a computer and a phone weeks later. They weren't functional until a month after that.

Upon her return in July 2019, she was faced with more complaints from Holmstrom, unnecessary supervision, a human resources employee lying to her rehab assistant, and an unofficial demotion. Her doctor said her PTSD symptoms were even worse than when she took her stress leave, and Nunez-Shular left the office for the last time three months after her return.

The final straw came when a box of her personal items mysteriously arrived on her desk in late-September. They were from the desk Holmstrom took over and no one, for the three months she had returned, would tell Nunez-Shular what happened to them or who put them there when she arrived.

Holmstrom told the court she boxed them and put them in storage, but didn't admit to putting them on her desk.

"While Ms. Nunez-Shular was initially happy to have them returned, she was confused and upset that nobody stepped up to explain where they were and why these were withheld from her for so long," Gropper's decision reads. "She left the office in tears and did not return."

Gropper said the lack of support in Nunez-Shular's gradual return to the office wasn't an accident. It was "never" the Band's intention to welcome her come back, the judge said.

"Instead, the OIB clumsily went through the motions of participating in the (gradual return), but never intended to participate. It did not share the goal of the program; to get Ms. Nunez-Shular back to her position as tax administrator," Gropper said.

Based on Holmstrom's evidence, Gropper found she officially replaced Nunez-Shular by a band council vote between April 2018 and July 2019.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Levi Landry or call 250-819-3723 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above. SUBSCRIBE to our awesome newsletter here.

News from © iNFOnews, 2025