UBC Anthropology Professor Bruce Miller provided key testimony in a case before the BC Supreme Court concerning how discrimination is determined under the BC Human Rights Code. In her Reasons for Judgment, of May 10, 2015, in the case of Vancouver Area Drug Users v. British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, an appeal of an earlier decision, Madame Justice Sharma ruled that the Downtown “Ambassadors” program, which operated in the Downtown Eastside, differentially discriminated against homeless Aboriginal people. She rejected the judgment in the Human Rights Tribunal that there was “insufficient evidence to prove a prima facie case of discrimination because there was no evidence of a nexus between any adverse impact on homeless people and the race, colour, ancestry, mental or physical condition of anyone.” Instead, she relied on Miller’s testimony showing this nexus through stereotyping by the “Ambassadors” in the absence of statistical evidence, testimony by Aboriginal people, or the intention to discriminate. Miller, in his expert report and direct testimony, analyzed the instructions given the Ambassadors and their reports of interactions with homeless people. Justice Sharma wrote, paragraph 104, “The bottom line of Dr. Miller’s evidence is that the behaviours on which the Program focussed are behaviours that co-exist with members of the Class.” She referred the Tribunal back to the approach to determining discrimination taken by Miller in Radek v Henderson, an earlier Human Rights Tribunal decision.
