HUMAN RIGHTS: ‘PEOPLE COME TO CANADA TO ESCAPE OPPRESSION’ – Racial taunts cost Mounties $500,000 – Siding with Iranian-born recruit, tribunal orders force to tackle systemic discrimination
By KIRK MAKIN
TORONTO, ONTARIO – An Iranian immigrant whose dream was to become a Mountie was awarded more than $500,000 in lost wages and damages yesterday by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal because he was racially taunted and harassed at an RCMP training depot in 1999.
The tribunal also ordered the RCMP to take measures to welcome members of visible minorities, to create a responsive complaints process, to initiate sensitivity training programs and to root out the reasons its attrition rate for non-white recruits soars above that for white recruits.
The rights tribunal concluded that Ali Tahmourpour, 35 – who now intends to make a career on the force – was thrown out of the RCMP training depot in Regina two months after his arrival based on false allegations of incompetence, mental instability and suicidal tendencies.
Tribunal member Karen Jensen found that, in “reckless disregard” for Mr. Tahmourpour’s rights and feelings, he was ridiculed and verbally abused for wearing a religious pendant and signing his name in Kurdish.
She found that Mr. Tahmourpour was also falsely accused of dodging a training session during which recruits have pepper spray aimed at their face, and that his training marks were unfairly downgraded for spurious reasons that smacked of racism.
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