When Dr. Hakam Bhullar told friends in India that he was taking on the College of Veterinarians of British Columbia to fight willful discrimination against Indo-Canadian vets, they told him he’d never win. The judge would be white, the lawyers would be white — the entire system would be biased against him, they said.
But that’s where they were wrong, he’d tell them. “The Canadian system is one of the best in the world. Everything’s fair. You need patience but at the end of the day this is the best country in the world. You can get justice.”
On June 6, his faith was rewarded. The Council of the College of Veterinarians of British Columbia announced it was dropping its request for a judicial review of a 2015 Human Rights Tribunal judgment that said the college had “engaged in systematic discrimination” against Dr. Bhullar and other South Asian vets.
In accepting the tribunal’s findings, the college apologized to Dr. Bhullar and 12 other complainants “for the loss of dignity, pain and suffering” caused by its conduct.
“The College acknowledges its past mistakes in the standards, inspection and discipline arenas. The College is now working to improve its processes and foster positive, constructive and forward-looking relationships with the complainants and all registrants.”
(The BC Veterinary Medical Association became the College of Veterinarians of B.C. in 2010.)
Dr. Bhullar, who owns Atlas Vet Clinic in Vancouver, says that he is satisfied with the apology. As part of the confidential mediation that led to it, he and Dr. Pavitar Bajwa are withdrawing two other complaints filed with the tribunal.
Roots of the conflict date back to 1995. At that time, Dr. Bhullar says, the SPCA was offering to spay or neuter cats and dogs for $40 to $50, much below the going rate at private clinics. There was, however, a nine-month wait list.
Dr. Bhullar started offering the service at the same price, sometimes seeing seven to 10 pets a day. He says he and fellow Indo-Canadian vets cleared the SPCA’s backlog in two years. It required a lot of work but it was his contribution to reducing the number of unwanted cats and dogs that have to be euthanized. “The cost [to me] is only $5 and takes me five minutes,” he says of why he still offers the services at those prices today.
He and other Indo-Canadian vets took this low-cost approach to all of their services. (In 2008, he was featured in a CBC Marketplace program called Cat Got Your Wallet which explored how veterinarians control how much they charge patients for medications. The reporter paid a Vancouver vet $22 for a vial of insulin for her cat; Dr. Bhullar showed her that it cost the vet only $4.16.)
In 2004 the BC vet association introduced spoken language requirements which, in essence, required vets to speak with no accent and have perfect grammar. In doing so, it set its language proficiency bar higher than other professions. (The Human Rights Tribunal later ruled the English requirements were “largely unattainable” by Indo-Canadians and placed them at a disadvantage.)
Unlike countries such as Japan and China, India conducts its veterinary studies in English, Dr. Bhullar says, so language skills of the vets emigrating from India, where English is the second language, are high.
“I think they wanted to bring in an English test so that no other vets [from India] would come,” Dr. Bhullar told the Courier. “It was a monopoly and I stood against it.”
He and others lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal, setting in motion the 13-year legal battle that ended last week.
As the dispute evolved, the association targeted clinics owned by Indo-Canadians for unscheduled inspections that were, the tribunal later said, based “on unsubstantiated rumours and anecdotal complaints.” Patients were urged to make complaints against Indo-Canadian vets.
On December 5, 2009, the association took away Dr. Bhullar’s licence after accusing him of providing care "far below the skill expected of a competent practitioner" and of having "moral turpitude."
The charges were bogus, says Dr. Bhullar, who spent the next 14 months fighting to get his licence restored.
“They have the tools to control us,” he says of the association’s methods. “They can say anything about you. When they are tested in court they are proven wrong.”
It was a very difficult time for him, he says. “I was just crying every day…. I thought someone had cut off my hands. It was hard to explain [to patients] that it was a political fight, and nothing to do with being a doctor.”
In October 2015, the tribunal finally released its report. “The BCVMA’s process of disciplinary complaints gave rise to patterns of race-based adverse treatment…; alleging in numerous cases that the Complainants falsified their medical records; assuming the Complainants information was less credible than others…; increasing the scrutiny of individuals close to Dr. Bhullar; and appointing investigators who had already formed the view that Dr. Bhullar and others were dishonest and possibly ungovernable,” tribunal member Judy Parrack wrote. The BCVMA “took no independent steps to determine if the allegations had any basis in fact.”
She noted that “race-based stereotypes played a role in BCVMA’s dealings with the complainants, including negative generalized views about the credibility and ethics of Indo-Canadians in relation to their veterinary practices.”
Dr. Bhullar credits his wife Joti for giving him the strength not to lose his faith in the system. “She is a very strong woman. She said, ‘We are Canadians. You have to fight for Canadian values….’ We can sell the house [to pay bills] but don’t give up. You have to stand up.’”
It was a very humiliating time for him and his family, he says. That’s why he asked the college to include his family in its apology. “My whole family suffered.”
Today, he’s relieved the ordeal is over but he’s also glad he challenged “the old boys club.”
“From day one I was fighting for justice,” he says. “At the end of the day, I believe in the Canadian system.”
