The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has been ordered to take another look at a complaint by a pharmacy assistant that her supervisors and co-workers in the Vancouver Island Health Authority discriminated against her.
Homa Safaei worked as a pharmacy assistant at St. Joseph’s Hospital from November 2015 until the end of January 2016, and at Cowichan District Hospital from February 26 to June 6, 2016. She was dismissed from both positions during her probationary period.
In November 2016, Safaei filed complaints with the human rights tribunal, alleging her supervisors and co-workers discriminated against her because of her religion and her place of origin.
Four months later, the tribunal asked her to be more specific about her religion and place of origin. It also informed Safaei that her complaint had been filed outside the six-month time limit and “any allegation prior to May 17, 2016 is late-filed outside of the filing time limit unless part of a continuing contravention.”
Safaei responded said she was a Muslim from Iran. She identified a number of incidents that she described as discrimination relating to her accent, her ethnicity and her ability to do the job.
Safaei reported that on May 26, 2016, one co-worker allegedly said: “If we came to your country, your people would kill us, but your people come here and get our jobs.”
She also alleged that between January and June 2016, someone told her: “We don’t let Vancouver Island become the same as the mainland and full of immigrants.”
In September, 2017, the tribunal declined to accept her complaint, concluding that Safaei’s explanation that she was pursuing other avenues of relief, such as WorkSafe B.C., was not an adequate justification for failing to file within the six-month time limit.
It also found the complaint contained “nothing unique, novel or unusual that has not been addressed in other human rights complaints.”
Safaei applied for judicial review of the decision, which was granted by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Nitya Iyer last week.
Iyer found the tribunal’s decision failed to take into account a more recent alleged discriminatory remark from a colleague and failed to treat the allegations together as a potentially ongoing contravention of Safaei’s rights.
Iyer said she agreed with the submissions made on behalf of Safaei that tribunals and courts must be attentive to the nuances and subtleties of racism and be careful to avoid common myths and misconceptions about how racism manifests in Canadian society.
“When reviewing tribunal decisions involving complaints alleging race-related grounds of discrimination, such as this case, the court must bring awareness of racism to its analysis,” Iyer wrote. “However, that does not change the standard of review and it does not mean that it is necessarily in the public interest to accept all late complaints alleging race-related grounds of discrimination.”
