Hamilton Spectator – April 18, 2006
A former RCMP cadet from Toronto, who still dreams of being a Mountie, has won a human rights tribunal hearing on his claim that he was rejected from the force because of discrimination.
Ali Tahmourpour’s complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission that he was racially harassed as a cadet at the RCMP’s training academy in Regina between July and October 1999 was dismissed as unfounded in July 2003.
The 32-year-old Muslim, who was born in Iran, also had complained that he had been repeatedly singled out as a racial minority by his superiors and had been unfairly evaluated due to systemic discrimination.
His employment was terminated after he had completed 14 out of 22 weeks of training.
Determined to achieve his dream, Tahmourpour has spent the past four years trying to convince the courts that the commission did not conduct a thorough investigation before rejecting his claim.
Tahmourpour won his first victory last year when the Federal Court ordered the Canadian Human Rights Commission to conduct a new investigation which would include consideration of RCMP statistics which he had obtained under federal access to information legislation.
He claimed that these statistics showed a much higher attrition rate for visible minorities than for other recruits.
Tahmourpour had argued, for example, that the RCMP’s own statistics for 1996 to 2001 showed a 7 per cent rate of attrition for cadets as a whole, but almost 16 per cent attrition among visible minorities.
Tahmourpour won his second victory last week, when the commission ruled that his complaint should be heard by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
The commission appointed a conciliator to attempt to resolve the matter but ruled that if a settlement is not reached between the parties within 60 days, “the complaint will be referred directly to the tribunal without returning to the commission.”
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