Cab company pays for driver’s racist remarks

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This article was published 06/03/2019 (2422 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Unicity Taxi and one of its drivers donated $1,500 to the Bear Clan Patrol, Main Street Project and a Holocaust education charity, after a passenger demanded reparations for a driver’s anti-Semitic and racist rant.

Ron East says he’s satisfied he got his message across and the cab company has learned a costly lesson. East, who is Jewish, also demanded and received an apology, by letter from Winnipeg’s largest cab company.

“I got the letter two days ago,” East said Wednesday. “I chose the charities because of the language the driver used.”

The incident took place on Feb. 4 when a Unicity cab picked up East in Whyte Ridge and drove down Kenaston Boulevard to the airport at 5 a.m.

The rant ran past the former Kapyong barracks — where a decade-and-a-half of court battles resulted in a federal settlement awarding the former Canadian Forces base to Treaty 1 First Nations for development — all the way to Richardson International Airport, eight kilometres away.

“He made remarks that in Tuxedo people won’t want homeless Indigenous folk walking around their neighbourhoods with empty beer and wine bottles. He didn’t know I was Jewish.”

The driver also made it clear he thought most Jewish people were wealthy and prejudiced against Indigenous people because of perceived poverty and addictions, East said.

East, who was furious, contacted Unicity and called Jewish advocacy group B’nai Brith for advice. He wrote a letter in which he demanded an apology, that the driver be fined and the company make donations to Main Street Project, Bear Clan and the Freeman Family Holocaust Education Centre in Winnipeg.

On Monday, he received a letter from Unicity letting him know he got everything he asked for.

Paul Sandhu, general manager of Unicity, did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

“How’d I get them to do this? I called and called and I got through to the general manager. I said I’d gather Jewish and Indigenous people together and we’d march on their offices,” East said.

“I was determined… and they realized I wasn’t going to back down.”

He said what shocked him beyond the substance of the rant was the fact the driver was a member of a visible minority.

“At some point, he or somebody he knew would have been subject to racist remarks,” East said.

“Facing anti-Semitism and racism at 5 a.m. in a taxi heading to the airport wasn’t my idea of a great start to the morning,” he added in a statement publicizing the compensation and apology issued by B’nai Brith Canada, the League for Human Rights.

“Only through accountability, education and reparation can true reconciliation begin and move us forward.”

B’nai Brith applauded both East and the cab company.

“As a society that thrives on diversity, multiculturalism and tolerance, there is no place for racism or anti-Semitism. We would like to thank Unicity for taking responsibility, rectifying the situation and apologizing for the driver’s hateful comments,” chief executive officer Michael Mostyn said in the statement.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca

Unicity letter