Indo-Canadian low-cost vets accuse British Columbia Vet Med Association of discrimination
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, July/August 1995:
VANCOUVER––Alleging that they have been targeted for doing
low-cost dog and cat sterilizations, 18 Indo-Canadian veterinarians, 16 of
them members of the British Columbia Veterinary Medical Association, are
pursuing discrimination claims against BCVMA registrar Valerie Osborne.
Led by Atlas Animal Hospital owner Hakam Bhullar, the vets
have registered a lawsuit with the British Columbia Supreme Court, seek-
ing to remove Osborne from office, and have petitioned the British
Columbia Human Rights Tribunal requesting that an unusually strict lan-
guage proficiency test required by the BCVMA be repealed.
Osborne and other BCVMA representatives have said little on the
record about the Indo-Canadian veterinarians’ complaints, except to deny
that the intent of the language proficiency test is discriminatory.
Under Osborne, Bhullar told Richard Chu of the Vancouver Sun,
the BCVMA requires vets to score 92% on a standard test of spoken
English. Lawyers, medical doctors, dentists, nurses, and firefighters are
required to score only 83%, Bhullar said.