OTTAWA — An employee's allegation of workplace racism has sparked a battle between the Canadian agency that deals with refugee claimants and the federal agency that probes complaints of discrimination.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission has taken the Immigration and Refugee Board to task for failing to investigate the worker's complaint properly and says it will have to do so itself.

"The commission (should) deal with the complaint because it is not satisfied that the human-rights issues raised by the complainant have been thoroughly addressed,'' a commission investigator wrote in a recent analysis.

Stung by the criticism, the refugee board has hit back, arguing the rights organization conducted a shoddy review and urged it to drop the matter.

"(The) report prepared by the investigator . . . is neither thorough nor neutral,'' Danica Shimbashi, the board's anti-harassment co-ordinator, wrote to the human rights agency last month.

The commission has "extraordinary powers'' and "must exercise those powers responsibly in the public interest.''

Neither Shimbashi nor John Chamberlin, an investigations manager at the commission, returned calls Wednesday.

However, spokesman Charles Hawkins said the board "doesn't comment on any matters that would be before another tribunal.''

The case arose almost three years ago when Norm Murray, a refugee protection officer with the board in Toronto, complained about his workplace.

The 15-year board employee said colleagues used racist terms such as "spook'' to refer to a fellow black employee but his complaints to a supervisor resulted only in a warning that he "be careful.''

Murray, who was one of several black and other minority employees of the board to allege racism, maintained in his complaint that management at the IRB "created and supported a poisoned work environment.''

All said their complaints to management fell on deaf ears.

A subsequent internal investigation dismissed the complaint as isolated even though it found evidence of inappropriate conduct.

The refugee board has vigorously denied condoning racism, saying it takes such complaints seriously and deals with them effectively.

In a case now before the courts, another black employee was fired for talking to the media about the problems. The refugee board maintained his allegations of racism amounted to harassment of three co-workers.

The Immigration and Refugee Board is Canada's largest quasi-judicial tribunal.

In its refugee protection division, about 200 political appointees make decisions on more than 40,000 asylum applications each year.

Another 1,390 civil servants provide bureaucratic support.