How is Jonathan using the tribunal system to extort money? Jonathan is a creepy grifter, bottom of the barrel online marketing scammer. He filed this many cases because he thought he had found a way to either extort money or make women touch his balls, win win.
Do people just pay him to drop his Troon tribunal complaints? Did he believe the tribunal would levy steep fines he demanded if he managed to drag these women through their system?
Can you check about any other legal system abuse grifter Jonathan has engaged in in the past?
I think quite a few of those questions have been answered already. Others I can’t really guess at because I truly don’t understand what Jonathan thought he’d get out of this.
HRTs are quasi-judicial bodies that exist to improve access to justice for unsophisticated legal parties (parties who can’t access justice through traditional means, who can’t afford representation, etc.). The Member in charge of a Tribunal proceeding is essentially delegated a specific, narrow responsibility—decide cases pertaining to alleged human rights violations—and nothing more than that.
It’s not a small claims court, per se; while Jonathan is suing for damages, it’s in a human rights context (e.g. “This violation deprived me of an opportunity/humiliated me/disrespected my dignity/etc., for which I am asking for xyz,” not, “Jimmy stole my car and I am suing him for the value of my car to be made whole/be put in the place I would be had Jimmy not stolen my car”), which makes it difficult to quantify damages. In a lot of civil suits, there are a variety of standard formulas that can be used to determine payouts (Loss of opportunity/employment because doctor paralyzed you? Compensation could include, though not necessarily limited to, projected earnings—including raises, usually based off prior raises/trends for job or company—and bonuses, cost of care until court date and projected cost of care for X months/years into future, and maybe some %/magical formula for pain and suffering), but human rights is even more convoluted. That’s why Jonathan brought up lost wages—it’s something that has a value that third parties can actually ascertain without breaking out the divining rods.
He’s likely milking the “bullying” as well because it’s something the Tribunal will have dealt with in some capacity. How much do you pay out to someone who couldn’t get his balls waxed? Who the hell knows. But bullying? Especially alleged cyber bullying, alleged stalking, alleged threats? That stuff (when real) destroys lives. That’s the kind of thing a Member would be more likely to consider awarding damages for, not only for pain/suffering/whatever but also as a punishment to the bully and deterrent to everyone else. Don’t do this, or else you’ll pay.
The BCHRT is basically the only place I (a non BC resident) can think of that a person like Jonathan could go to for this nonsense. However, in Canada there’s also a lot of deference to proceedings like these. The idea is that even if a non-lawyer (e.g. a minister) is entrusted with a quasi-judicial role, if their role is well defined and their actions contained within the limits proscribed by their “home statute” (the legislation giving them power) they should be trusted to do their job unless there’s some palpable overriding error. That’s why appeals sometimes crash and burn. There’s a lot of deference, and while that should be putting pressure on these decision makers to not screw things up in the first place, it doesn’t always. Still, appeals have succeeded—just takes a bit of maneuvering that might seem weird to your internal sense of right and wrong/justice/fairness.
I think Jonathan is just ratcheting up the damage awards because he wants these vulnerable women to cave. He wants them to see these massive numbers and agree to negotiate a settlement. Luckily these women have legal representation, which might be why Jonathan is now slightly pivoting to also target the lawyer himself—neither the lawyer nor the Foundation are particularly popular, so while targeting vulnerable women has just made him look like the bully he is, he thinks he might be able to score some sympathy if he can turn it into powerful, evil, Christian Albertans vs poor, disabled trans woman in BC.
Of course, that’s backfiring gloriously, but I can see why he thinks it was worth a shot.
(This is intended as legal information, not advice.)