Where a tribunal or court has the power to review a decision on a “reasonableness” standard, it must not reweigh the evidence. Some guidance on this nuanced task is given in The Professional Conduct Committee of the CPAO v Siddiqi, 2026 ONSC 2190 (CanLII).
The applicant’s licence as a chartered professional accountant was revoked after he was convicted of knowingly making a false statement resulting in a loss of $740,000 in bank loans approved by a government agency. Seven years later, a panel of the Discipline Committee refused his reinstatement application after a two-day hearing. A majority of the panel found that he had not demonstrated current good character. While it accepted that the applicant had paid the court fine, was a respected and contributing member of his community, and expressed remorse about his bad choices, it remained concerned about his degree of insight and the extent of his remorse. His focus was primarily about the impact of the consequences of the conduct on himself and his family rather than its impact on others, including the banks and the government agency. For example, he had not made full restitution for their losses.
An internal Appeal Panel allowed the applicant’s appeal and directed that he be reinstated. The Appeal Panel held that the Discipline Panel’s decision was unreasonable in several respects, including because it failed to properly consider the applicant’s otherwise exemplary record, his acceptance of responsibility for his conduct, his expressions of remorse, his subsequent community contributions, his good character evidence, and his continuing professional development activities. The regulator sought judicial review.
The Court described the reasonableness standard of review by an appeal body as follows:
First, reasonableness review requires considering both the outcome of the decision and the reasoning process engaged in arriving at the decision. The reasoning process must demonstrate transparency, intelligibility, and justifiability and the outcome must be tenable in light of the relevant factual and legal constraints: Vavilov, at paras. 99-101. Reasonableness review focuses on the decision below with a view to determining if those standards are met. It does not focus on the conclusion that the Appeal Panel would have reached if it had been in the place of the decision maker below: Vavilov, at paras. 83-86. Fundamentally, reasonableness review also recognizes that reasonable people can disagree about what should happen in a particular case. Thus, disagreeing with a decision is not enough to find that the decision is unreasonable….
It is the role of the decision maker below to assess and evaluate the evidence before it. Thus, absent exceptional circumstances, reasonableness review requires refraining from “reweighing and reassessing the evidence considered by the decision maker”: Vavilov, at para. 125. However, “the reasonableness of a decision may be jeopardized where the decision maker has fundamentally misapprehended or failed to account for the evidence before it”: Vavilov, at para. 126. Other circumstances where the rationality of a decision is undermined include where the decision maker has relied on irrelevant stereotypes, failed to consider relevant evidence, or based their conclusion on evidence that was not before them: Vavilov, at para. 126.
The Court determined that the Discipline Panel had considered the factors identified by the Appeal Panel but had reached a different conclusion as to their significance. For example:
Thus, rather than fundamentally misapprehending or ignoring the evidence before them, the [Discipline] Panel weighed all of the evidence they heard and came to the conclusion that that evidence did not demonstrate the insight they were looking for to be satisfied that there had been a material change in the applicant’s acceptance of responsibility for his actions since the revocation decision in 2018.
The Court also said:
It is not surprising that reasonable people could disagree on this issue, particularly in the case of someone like Mr. Siddiqi whose misconduct involved financial fraud (a profound betrayal of the values and ethics of the accounting profession), but who, at the same time, has done much good in the world since the misconduct occurred. At play is the tension between recognizing that rehabilitation is an important value of the readmission process and the need to maintain the reputation of the profession by assuring the public that its members will not betray the fundamental values of that profession by engaging in fraudulent conduct. In the end the legislature made a choice about who should make that decision and what powers a panel on appeal should have to set aside the first decision. The decision is to be made by the panel who hears the witnesses and considers the matter at first instance. That decision can only be set aside on appeal if it is unreasonable, not if the Appeal Panel merely thinks that it is wrong.
The Court set aside the appeal decision and restored the decision of the Discipline Panel because the Appeal Panel impermissibly had done its own weighing of the evidence and decided to accept it, rather than deferring to the Discipline Panel’s assessment of the weight to be attributed to that evidence.
The Court also cited the recent decision of Law Society of Ontario v AA, 2026 ONCA 47 (CanLII), which held that panels dealing with good character concerns need to address the “public trust and confidence” aspect of the issue.
The Court provides regulators with guidance on how to assess the reasonableness of a decision.
