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KRISTEN THOMPSON/METRO VANCOUVER
Laura Track, Pivot Legal Society lawyer, and David Dennis, with United Native Nations, at the Pivot office in Vancouver yesterday.
Security guards in Vancouver are discriminating against the city’s homeless by telling people sitting or sleeping on benches to move along, to stop binning in alleys, and by following and intimidating them.
These are the allegations of a Human Rights complaint filed yesterday against Vancouver’s Civil City commissioner and the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association (DVBIA) on behalf of homeless, drug addicted and disabled people in Vancouver.
The complaint was filed by Pivot Legal Society, the Vancouver Area Network Of Drug Users Society and the United Native Nations.
Laura Track, a lawyer with Pivot, said the Downtown Ambassadors program, which is run by Genesis Security and the DVBIA, under the guidance of commissioner Geoff Plant, singles out street people and impedes their legal access to public areas.
“We want the Tribunal to clarify what constitutes appropriate conduct on the part of private security guards when they’re dealing with homeless people in public space,” Track said.
David Dennis, with United Native Nations, said the Ambassador Program seems to be a tool used by the city to push homeless people aside.
“We’re taking it upon ourselves to join in with this civil action so that our people can have some measure of protection prior to 2010,” he said.
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