BY HARRY BAINS

Former B.C. minister

SINCE retiring from politics in 2024, I’ve been watching as an outsider, and I was absolutely appalled to see what happened in the legislature last week. Decades of work towards equality for visible minorities came under threat.

Nearly every B.C. Conservative MLA voted to repeal the entire Human Rights Code of British Columbia, the very law that protects people from discrimination based on race, religion, skin colour, ancestry, and more.

B.C. NDP MLAs defeated the bill immediately. But the vote itself sends a troubling message, and is the latest in a decades-long pattern of conservative politicians failing to stand up for our community’s rights.

The Human Rights Code is the legal foundation that ensures you can’t be discriminated against because of who you are. For example, it ensures a landlord cannot refuse to rent to you because you are Punjabi. It protects a Sikh employee from being fired from their job because of their faith. It prevents a business from turning away a customer for simply wearing a turban. It protects all of us.

When B.C. NDP Premier Dave Barrett introduced British Columbia’s modern Human Rights Code and Human Rights Commission in 1973, discrimination was common. Immigrants, people of colour and First Nations faced racism in housing, employment, and public services. Chinese Canadians had endured the head tax. Japanese Canadians had been interned and dispossessed. South Asians had only somewhat recently won the right to vote after decades of exclusion, and we fought against racism every single day.

Barrett understood that rights mean little without enforcement. The Human Rights Commission was created to investigate systemic discrimination and stand up for communities that were facing discrimination.

Yet conservatives, under different party names, have always worked to undo those protections.

The conservative Social Credit government eliminated the Commission in 1983 before the NDP restored it in the 1990s.

Then Social Credit became the B.C. Liberals abolished it again in 2002,, leaving British Columbia as the only province in Canada without a Human Rights Commission. It took another New Democratic government, under John Horgan, to restore it.

Now the B.C. Liberals have become the B.C. Conservatives, and voted to eliminate it again.

For years, a group of 13 South Asian veterinarians at low-cost clinics in Vancouver faced unequal licensing barriers, intense scrutiny, complaints, inspections, and disciplinary actions from their own professional regulator. In a landmark case that spanned a decade, the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal found the B.C. Veterinary Medical Association discriminated against them because of their race. Because the Liberals eliminated the Commission the veterinarians spent nearly $2 million of their own to fight the case. Had there been a Commission, it would have taken their fight on their behalf. That is what Conservatives just voted to eliminate.

The MLA who introduced the bill last week is Tara Armstrong, who has publicly called for Canada to “reverse mass migration,” a concept often referred to as “remigration.” That idea is being pushed by white supremacist organizations and would mean mass deportations of people they claim do not culturally belong, even if those people immigrated legally or were born in Canada.

With views like that, it is not surprising that she would seek to eliminate the Human Rights Code. What is more troubling is that B.C. Conservatives, including Surrey MLAs Linda Hepner, Brent Chapman, Trevor Halford, Bryan Tepper and Mandeep Dhaliwal, voted in favour of her bill.

Visible minority MLAs like Harman Bhangu, Mandeep Dhaliwal, and Steve Kooner should know better. They should understand how our parents and grandparents suffered because of a lack of protections.

It is true that in the legislature, there is sometimes a tradition of allowing bills to pass first reading as a procedural courtesy. But that tradition is not absolute. Parties have often voted down legislation at first reading when it is divisive, harmful or not worth the legislature’s time. In fact, B.C. Conservative MLAs themselves voted against bills at first reading multiple times in the fall. Yet when it came to a bill eliminating fundamental human rights protections, they chose to support it.

People’s rights should be a matter of principle, not process.

For the South Asian community, this is not abstract. Our community remembers when the Komagata Maru was turned away from our B.C.’s shores, and when South Asians could not vote. We remember exclusion from professions and public life because of our skin colour or turbans. These injustices are still within living memory today.

South Asians, Chinese Canadians, Japanese Canadians, and Indigenous peoples have had to fight and sacrifice for our rights. To vote to repeal the entire Human Rights Code is an insult to that legacy. I’m appalled Conservatives have forgotten that history and voted to remove protections people fought hard to win.

Racism and discrimination still exist. The answer is not to weaken the law designed to confront them.

I am proud there is a party that has always been at the forefront of South Asian representation, and has fought to ensure that visible minorities who have often been left out of decision-making, have a seat at the table.

Moe Sihota was the first South Asian elected to a provincial parliament in Canada. Before Baltej Singh Dhillon ran for the NDP, he forced a change in RCMP policy to allow him to wear a turban while in police uniform. Ravi Kahlon wore a turban at the Olympic opening ceremonies, making us all proud. Raj Chouhan became the first South Asian Speaker of the Legislature.

But most importantly, our party has always backed up our words by fighting to protect people’s rights. And we’ll keep doing that, no matter how many times Conservatives try to set us back.

For families across British Columbia, the Human Rights Code represents a promise that no one will be treated as less than because of who they are. That promise is worth defending.