Northern Health has denied wrongfully demoting a former employee for making pro-Palestinian statements outside of work.
Amy Blanding, former executive director of the Northern Health Authority’s inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility office, says she was removed from her position for being critical of Israel’s war in Gaza, which has now killed nearly 45,000 Palestinians, according to reporting by Al Jazeera. At least 1,139 Israelis have died since the conflict began with a Hamas-led attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Blanding filed a civil lawsuit against Northern Health in early October alleging defamation, breach of Charter rights and constructive dismissal, which is when an employer changes working conditions in such a way that an employee is forced to quit.
In mid-November, the health authority filed a legal response denying any wrongdoing.
Neither Blanding’s claims nor the authority’s response have been tested in court.
Blanding says she was removed from her position as executive director earlier this year after her employer received a letter of complaint alleging she made members of the Prince George Jewish community feel unsafe.
The complaint letter points to three main actions taken by Blanding. First, that she wore a watermelon T-shirt to a choir rehearsal in Prince George; second, that she sang a song in a choir concert about violence inflicted against children during conflict; and third, that she made a personal social media post about the concert criticizing the “genocide in Palestine” and Israel’s use of force that, at the time, had “murder[ed] 33,000 civilians, over 14,000 of them children.”
Blanding has been working as a musician in Prince George for more than a decade and says she produces music “with a political bent that speaks to social justice work.”
In October, Blanding told The Tyee that her intention was to be critical of the Israeli government, not Jewish people.
The complaint letter contested Blanding’s claim of 33,000 civilian deaths and the classification of the conflict as genocide, and said her watermelon T-shirt was “a blatant, visual call for the genocide against the citizens of the only Jewish nation in the world.”
Data and analysis from UN experts align more closely with Blanding’s assertions in her social media posts than with the letter’s counter-statements, and, according to reporting by NPR, the watermelon symbol has been used to represent Palestinian resistance to occupation since the 1980s and is currently most commonly understood as a call to ceasefire.
Blanding says she bought the T-shirt in a fundraiser for humanitarian aid for Gaza in support of Palestinian human rights.
After Northern Health received the complaint, Blanding says, she was asked to publish a pre-written apology to her personal social media accounts.
Blanding previously told The Tyee this felt as if her employer wanted her to admit to wrongdoing. When she asked Northern Health if she could think about it, she said, she was told that was the same as refusing and that she had been removed from the executive director position.
The lawsuit alleges, “Northern Health executives stated that the context and accuracy of the letter were irrelevant to their decision. Northern Health’s priority was risk management, not doing the right thing. Northern Health did not follow its own guidelines concerning complaints from the public.”
In its response, Northern Health said it “received and investigated the complaint per its internal policies and procedures” and “determined that it was appropriate to take corrective steps to address some of the concerns arising from the plaintiff’s conduct.”
After she was removed as executive director, Blanding says, she was offered her old position of regional manager of organizational education and training, where she’d worked from June 2018 to August 2024.
Blanding’s lawsuit says she was led to believe the executive director position would be made into a permanent one, but Northern Health’s response says the position was always temporary and it was “explicit or implied” in the contract that Blanding would return to her regional manager position in August 2025.
A “key area of responsibility” of the role “as explicitly set out in the IDEA contract and implied, included... not engaging in activities, even on her personal time, that she knew or ought to have known may be offensive to individuals, both members of the public and NHA staff,” Northern Health said in its response.
Because Blanding was in a senior leadership role, her actions could be perceived as representative of the health authority, which could make people feel “ostracized or unwelcome and potentially hesitant to access health care,” Northern Health said in its response.
Blanding’s refusal to publish the pre-written apology to members of the Jewish community constituted a breach of her contract, and Northern Health was “therefore entitled” to remove Blanding from the executive director role and put her back in her regional manager position in May, the response continued.
Northern Health said it had committed to compensating Blanding with the executive director salary until August 2025, but that Blanding went on medical leave on May 21, 2024, and resigned June 10, 2024.
Therefore, the health authority says, it shouldn’t have to pay anything to Blanding. It denies she suffered any damages, was forced to quit or was defamed.
Northern Health also said it “is not a government actor or entity under Section 32 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” and therefore Blanding cannot say her Charter rights were violated because she was not a government employee.
When Blanding filed her lawsuit in October, she was joined at the Vancouver courthouse by her former supervisor, Vash Ebbadi-Cook, former executive director for workforce sustainability, quality and innovation at Northern Health. Ebbadi-Cook uses they/he pronouns.
Ebbadi-Cook quit in protest after Blanding was removed from her executive director role. They joined Blanding for support only; they are not participating in the lawsuit.
Speaking with The Tyee after Northern Health filed its response, Ebbadi-Cook said he was not surprised but is disappointed with his former employer’s response.
“The piece that stuck out for me was the argument against the Charter claim itself,” they said. “I worry about what message that portrays for people to continue speaking up against not just genocide, but how Northern Health is going about managing people.”
Ebbadi-Cook added they feel frustrated that Northern Health doesn’t seem to have learned any lessons after they quit in protest over how Blanding was treated.
“Every difficult decision is bound to create some manner of harm, but this was undue harm and, from my perspective, it created a lot of unintended consequences that have furthered that harm and eroded trust,” Ebbadi-Cook said.
The Tyee contacted Blanding and her lawyer Karen Segal after Northern Health filed its response to their lawsuit, but they declined to comment.
