OTTAWA - The federal government will not challenge a court decision ordering it to reinstate Jean Pelletier as head of Via Rail.
Privy Council spokesman Greg Jack confirmed Monday that Ottawa will not take the case to the Supreme Court of Canada.
A spokesman for Pelletier said he had no immediate comment on the decision. It was not clear if Pelletier would get his old job back given a number of pending court cases.
Pelletier, a former chief of staff to Jean Chretien when he was prime minister, was fired in March 2004 after making controversial comments about Olympic champion Myriam Bedard.
A Federal Court justice ruled in November 2005 that the government had treated Pelletier unfairly.
Paul Martin's government responded to the judgment by firing Pelletier again -- in the midst of an election campaign in December 2005 -- and claiming that this time it was following procedural niceties.
The court's order that Pelletier be reinstated was upheld by the Federal Court of Appeal last January and the deadline to file an appeal expired Monday.
Pelletier still has two other cases before the courts related to his firing, and yet another contesting a finding by Justice John Gomery that he was partly to blame for the federal sponsorship scandal.
Pelletier was appointed Via chairman by Chretien in 2001, a posting that was widely viewed as a reward for his years of service in the Prime Minister's Office.
He came to grief three years later, over comments he made about Bedard, the onetime Olympic medallist who claimed she was fired from a job at Via for reasons related to the sponsorship program.
Pelletier adamantly denied that and described Bedard at the time as a "poor girl'' who was under psychological strain in her personal life and deserved pity.
He later acknowledged the comments were "inappropriate'' and apologized, but was fired by Martin three days later.
Federal lawyers admitted Pelletier wasn't given a formal notice that his job was in danger before he was dismissed, nor asked to present a formal defence of his actions.
But the government said that, as a political appointee, he wasn't entitled to the same stringent procedural safeguards as other employees.
It also argued that -- to the extent he was due any warning -- he was a political veteran with years of experience in Ottawa and "ought to have known'' his job was on the line over the Bedard comments.
That reasoning was rejected by the Federal Court of Appeal.
The court agreed the government had the authority to get rid of Pelletier before his five-year term at Via had run its full course, since he technically served "at pleasure'' of the federal cabinet.
But if the reason for the firing was an allegation of misconduct, he was owed a formal warning that included the precise reasons why he was in trouble, and an opportunity to answer the allegation.
Pelletier has filed a separate court case, yet to be resolved, that challenges the decision by the Martin government to fire him a second time.
He has also launched a suit claiming $3.7 million for alleged damages to his reputation.
Finally, he is seeking to overturn the findings of the Gomery inquiry, which found no evidence of specific wrongdoing by Pelletier but blamed him in a general sense for not exercising better political control of the sponsorship program.
