But Muslim patients regularly ask for a doctor of a specific gender, said Dr. Alan Drummond, co-chair of public affairs for the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians.
They “make an effort” to accommodate Islamic patients who would feel more comfortable with a female physician, he said. There has been no liberal outcry about these requests.
The Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada took a similar position in a statement a few years ago, saying that requests for a doctor of a particular gender would be accommodated.
“Race isn’t an option,” a society spokesperson said by email.
In the video posted online on Sunday, the woman becomes increasingly insistent to see a white doctor. “I saw a doctor that was not white that did not help my kid,” says the woman in the video. “I would like to see a white doctor. You’re telling me there isn’t one white doctor in this whole entire building?”
She goes on to demand a physician with better dental hygiene who “doesn’t have brown teeth” and “speaks English”.
Over the course of four minutes of video, a woman asks clinic staff several times to see a white doctor to treat her son who she says has chest pains. When staff tell her that no such doctor is available, the woman eventually says “being white in this country I should just shoot myself”.
Hitesh Bhardwaj, an Indian, recorded the incident while waiting for his own appointment at Rapid Access to Medical Specialists in Mississauga. He shared his video with CBC News. Bhardwaj said he did so “out of a sense of responsibility”.
“I could have just ignored it, but some inner voice convinced me that it is totally wrong, and there is no room for misinterpretation,” he said. “If we all just keep ignoring and shrugging it off to avoid being in unpleasant situations, then things do not change . . . watching something like this in front of your eyes, and it happening so openly and boldly — it just shocked me.”
“I am so honoured to live in a country where most of the people are so welcoming and inclusive, and more importantly, not afraid to stand for the right cause,” Bhardwaj said.
Peel Regional Police say they were called to a clinic in Mississauga, on Sunday after reports of a disturbance, but the case was closed with no charges laid since no one was hurt and no threats were made.
The Canadian Medical Association, meanwhile, said that “racism has no place in Canada nor in our health-care system”.
“Part of Canada’s strength is our multicultural history and makeup,” the association’s president, Dr. Granger Avery, said in a statement.
On Tuesday Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne told Canadian daily, The Star: “I think it’s a shocking occurrence and there is no place for that kind of behavior-for that kind of racism and hatred,” she said. “It was very, very disturbing.”