An Indigenous family has filed a human rights complaint against retail giant Canadian Tire over a pair of incidents that happened on the same day at the company’s Coquitlam, B.C., location.
Dawn Wilson said she and her then 66-year-old father, who are both members of the Heiltsuk Nation, were having a new set of tires installed on their car on a January day in 2020.
They were told the tire service and an oil change would take about 90 minutes so they decided to do some shopping in the store.
“We grabbed a buggy and we had filled it up with all kinds of household items,” Dawn Wilson said.
As a cashier at the checkout rang up the $600 worth of merchandise they were purchasing, Wilson claims a security guard demanded to look inside her father’s backpack.
“I looked away and smiled and tried to pretend it was normal so …