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SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - In the past seven months, the NWT Human Rights panel has ordered businesses - as well as people employed there - to pay out more than $38,000 in three separate discrimination cases.

From this amount, $17,500 has been doled out to compensate complainants for injuries to their dignity.

The most recent decision came on Jan. 7, when the commission's adjudicator James R. Posynick ordered City Cabs to pay Bill Burles $1,500 for "injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect" for repeatedly having to pay a $6 service charge to use the company's handi-van vehicle.

"In my view, Mr. Burles' feelings of a diminished sense of security and self-esteem resulting from the imposition of the fee and its effects on his lifestyle are reasonably held," Posynick wrote in his decision.

The company was also ordered to reimburse Burles $60 for the many $6 surcharges.

Burles had asked for $3,500 in compensation "for loss of quality of life and financial expenses."

He said the dignity compensation can be viewed as reimbursements for things you can't itemize on a list and don't have monetary value.

"Like a social life," he said.

"I actually did not go to social events with friends and family and whatnot because it would have cost me not only cab fare but that extra $6," he said.

"I was also going to physiotherapy two times a week and I was taking the cab and that was costing me $90 a week. I'm on social assistance; $90 a week is crazy."

Burles said he was housebound during the recent snowy November.

"Had it not been for that $6 fee, I probably would have gone some places by cab," he said.

The chair of the human rights adjudication panel said he would not respond to questions about how adjudicators come up with compensation amounts.

"The panel must preserve its impartiality and independence," wrote lawyer Adrian Wright in an e-mail.

Therese Boullard, director of the NWT Human Rights Commission, said compensation awards for loss of dignity depend on the jurisdiction and the adjudicator. Criteria considered which can influence decisions are "the severity of the discrimination, the duration of the discrimination" and "the vulnerability of the victim," she said.

Decisions are also based on submissions from parties. She said when a complaint gets to a hearing, an adjudicator can ask the complainant for a remedy they believe is fair.

There is no requirement to use the awarded amount for anything specific.

Dignity compensation differs from punitive damages - where a party is found to have discriminated "maliciously" or "wilfully" - because any person whose complaint goes to a hearing is eligible for the dignity compensation.

Boullard said the NWT does not provide a maximum amount in the act for compensation.

In November, Genevieve Savage was awarded $33,170.33 from Polar Tech and two of its employees - Billy Ryan and Corey Dressler - for having been harassed and discriminated against as the only woman in the store's garage for a five to seven month period.

Adjudicator M. Joan Mercredi awarded Savage $15,000 in compensation for injury to her dignity, feelings and self-respect. Boullard said that was the largest amount awarded to date for this kind of injury in the NWT. Savage had requested $25,000.

In Mercredi's decision, she stated "the NWT Act is relatively new and damages awarded in the category of injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect have usually been in the $2,000 to $3,000 range, like they have historically been capped in other jurisdictions."

Based on the evidence presented in the hearing - in one instance, Savage was physically dominated and compared to a dog - and considering the fact that, as a result, Savage said she may not pursue mechanics any further, Mercredi said there was reason for a "significant award."

Last June, adjudicator Shannon Gullberg awarded Patricia Sherman $3,500, with $1,000 in compensation for injury to her dignity after having to repeatedly search for a sitting stool she required for a disability, and for being subjected to music with sexually-explicit lyrics while working at Boston Pizza.

Boullard said in her experience, complainants' first motivation is not money.

"What I hear back is, 'I don't want to see it happening again to anyone else,'" she said.