What is the test for deferential deference to a human rights panel?

The question of curial deference in relation to findings of fact is another matter. In this regard the courts customarily defer to tribunals, including human rights panels, on the ground that tribunals are situated and equipped to make such findings: Gould v. Yukon Order of Pioneers, 1996 CanLII 231 (SCC), [1996] 1 S.C.R. 571 at 584-85. The need for curial deference arises not because human rights panels possess any peculiar ability in relation to finding facts but because, like all fact-finding bodies that receive evidence in the first instance, tribunals are in a unique position to evaluate such factors as, for example, the credibility of a particular witness and, concomitantly, the weight that should be assigned to specific statements of evidence.

This is the “signal advantage” enjoyed by the primary finder of fact to which L’Heureux-Dube J. refers in Mossop, supra, at 599. Likewise, La Forest J.’s reference to the ‘superior expertise’ of human rights tribunals in relation to fact-finding is grounded in the realization that tribunals are ‘in the best position to evaluate’ the facts upon which findings of discrimination are based: Ross v. New Brunswick School District No. 15, 1996 CanLII 237 (SCC), [1996] 1 S.C.R. 825 at 849.