Cry Me A River

There's that red flag. That name that warns that the situation is more than has been reported. That something odiferous in the extreme is in the offing.

Three resident doctors at University of Ottawa, foreign medical students, appear to feel that they have been discriminated against. Complaints have been filed with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. The complainants: Dr. Waleed AlGhaithy, with the university's neurosurgery program, and Drs. Khalid Aba-Alkhail and Manal AlSaigh, residents in the cardiac surgery program, all from Saudi Arabia.

The nature of their complaint has not been fully set out for the reading public. Merely that they have lodged their complaints. The press release revealing the complaints did not reveal their nature. Emails that passed between Ottawa Hospital executives were said to have comprised the "unambiguous" evidence of the discrimination, reprisal and intimidation the students are claiming to have been the targets of. It would appear that the instances of the case are widely known among faculty and residents of the university.

Which would lead one to the conclusion that the three residents are not held in particularly high regard, among the faculty for whatever reason. Not, one would assume, because of their citizenship nor their religious views because if one thing can be fairly well guaranteed, at University of Ottawa or indeed any university in the land, Arabs and Muslims are generally highly regarded, treated with equanimity and equality, if not undue deference.

Officials at The Ottawa Hospital and the Heart Institute, both associated with the University of Ottawa, have been alerted and are prepared to respond. It would appear that a neurosurgeon at The Ottawa Hospital who is also an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa is involved in having managed in some manner to offend the litigants.

As proof that Arabs and Muslims are well respected, the university's student body is prepared to support the grievances of the three residents.

One of the claims made with respect to 'reprisals' is that an august group of actors with these institutions, Drs. Wilbert Keon (emeritus professor, surgeon, founder of the Heart Institute), Theirry Mesana (chief of cardiac surgery at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute), and James Worthington (The Ottawa Hospital's vice-president of patient safety), met with Mr. Aba-Alkhail, indicating to him that he might be prepared to dismiss his grievance or face "career obliteration".

Mr. AlGhaithy's complaint naming Dr. Tsai had the potential of having him "dismissed/suspended", should he obstinately decide to forge on with his action. The university's student federation's Student Appeal Centre's director claims she had dealt with other instances of discrimination, most often involving Arabs or francophone students from Africa in the university's nursing program.

"Students go in good faith and file complaints for things they consider to be very serious. What you see is a pattern of disbelief, of blaming the victims, lack of investigation and improper procedures."

Sad, is it not, when the student body and their representatives are at loggerheads with the administration? "We are aware of many students who are going to the tribunal, bringing forth complaints now against the university", according to the director of the university's Centre for Equity and Human Rights, representing the student federation.

All of this sounds rather tawdry and offensive, not at all reflective of what should be occurring at a Canadian university and medical centre of great renown. And then you read the clincher, that the three resident doctors who are up in arms over their purported discriminatory treatment, have travelled to Victoria to meet with their lawyer. And who might that lawyer be?

Ah, there's the rub: the notorious Doug Christie.