Indo-Canadian veterinarians' prices a 'racialized' issue
B.C. language test disguises ugly motive, case before human rights panel says
Pete McMartin
Vancouver Sun
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
The fault line runs down the middle of a table. The table is in a hearing room of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.
Here, the twain of East and West finally met. It did not go swimmingly. They collided against each other, as tectonic plates might.
It is a small room, a corner office in a shiny new highrise on Robson Street.
The table is flanked by twin teams of lawyers. Around them, palisade-like, are dozens of briefs with light blue covers. The briefs are anything but brief. Each is several inches thick, armed with enough evidentiary material to endure a siege.
Which this will be. The hearing is in its fifth week, and in those five weeks, I am informed, I am the only reporter to have shown up, although there will be plenty of time for others to drop in. Hearings are to be spread over a year, with the last of them scheduled to be heard as late as September 2008. This could be the longest case the tribunal has ever heard.
On one side of the table is the legal counsel representing the respondent, the B.C. Veterinary Medical Association.
On the other is the legal counsel for the complainants, some 19 of them.
All of them are Indo-Canadian veterinarians trained in India or the Punjab, and all are convinced they have been discriminated against by the BCVMA. Only one of the 19 is actually at the table Monday, however -- Dr. Hakam Bhullar, owner of the Atlas Animal Hospital at Fraser and 41st Avenue, and the group's spokesman.
The genesis of the group's complaint against the BCVMA is what the group's lawyer, Clea Parfitt, characterized in an interview outside the hearing as "an economic issue that has become racialized."
They claim the BCVMA discriminates against Indo-Canadian vets by demanding they pass an English-language proficiency test before being granted licences to practise in B.C.
But that test, they say, disguises an uglier motive. They say other BCVMA members are angry that the Indo-Canadian veterinarians were charging much less for basic veterinary services, like spaying or neutering.
"These standards that are currently being imposed by the BCVMA," reads the complainants' submission to the tribunal, "are more stringent than any other veterinary association in Canada, none of which have any separate language requirement for foreign veterinarians, aside from the ability to pass the practical and qualifying veterinary examinations which, outside of the province of Quebec, are mainly in English. The new BCVMA standards are also higher than for any other veterinary association in the U.S. and even higher than those used for other types of medical service professional associations, such as for physicians, nurses, dentists or pharmacists."
They also argue that the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association already conducts a five- to seven-day clinical proficiency exam, which foreign-trained vets must pass before they can receive their Canadian certification. That exam has an oral component in which candidates are judged on communication skills, which, presumably, candidates must be sufficiently competent in to pass. Why then, they argue, does the BCVMA insist on its own test, if not to act as a discriminatory filter against the low-cost Indo-Canadian vets?
Well, the BCVMA argues, the test is necessary simply to maintain the proficiency of veterinarians in the province, and to ensure the service provided to clients is of the highest order.
On Monday, the complainants' legal counsel was cross-examining Dr. Andrew Forsyth, former president of the BCVMA in 2005-2006.
Forsyth is a big, fleshy workhorse of a guy, pleasant and florid-faced. The questions he faced were not so pleasant, though. They gave some hint of the charged climate behind the issue.
Had he, the complainants' counsel wanted to know, ever heard allegations of rumours that there were 400 vets coming from the Punjab? He couldn't recall that, he said. Had he ever heard allegations that people were working in sweatshops in the back of the complainants' clinics? He had not, he said. Had he heard allegations that Indo-Canadian low-cost vets were cutting corners, such as using cheap anesthetics or not sterilizing equipment? No, he had not. Had he ever heard Dr. Bhullar referred to as "evil" and a "mastermind?" No, Forsyth said, he had not.
"I think I would remember if someone called Dr. Bhullar 'evil,' " Forsyth said. "That's quite remarkable."
All the while, Dr. Bhullar was sitting not three feet away from Forsyth, watching Forsyth answer. He passed the occasional Post-it note to his counsel.
Later, outside, he was asked how business was.
Great, he said. His clinic, open seven days a week until midnight, was jammed with clients. Sixty per cent of them, he estimated, were Caucasian, even including some people from The Vancouver Sun. He mentioned my colleague, Barbara Yaffe.
I visited Yaffe in her office after I left the hearing. Did she know Bhullar?
Yep, she said. Terrific veterinarian, she said. He treated her Yorkie, curing it of an abscess that other vets had misdiagnosed.
"Best diagnostician in B.C.," she said. "In my opinion."