B.C. washing ceremony marks settlement of Canadian Tire racial profiling complaint

Dawn Wilson, a member of the Heiltsuk Nation, has filed a human rights complaint after an incident at a B.C. Canadian Tire store.

An Indigenous woman in British Columbia who filed a human rights complaint along with her father against Canadian Tire says she’s relieved the case has been settled years later and hopes it will help others avoid the same thing.

In a settlement agreement with Richard and Dawn Wilson, a third-party security company at a Canadian Tire store in Coquitlam acknowledges its former employee contravened the human rights code against racial profiling and discrimination when they searched Richard Wilson’s bag in 2020.

The store itself admits a former employee made derogatory comments when told about what happened and Canadian Tire Corp. acknowledges it did not forward a complaint to the Coquitlam store for weeks, and only did so after the employee no longer worked there.

Representatives from Canadian Tire, the store itself, and Blackbird Security are participating in a traditional Heiltsuk washing ceremony, a form of restorative justice that will acknowledge the harm of racial profiling.

As part of the settlement, Canadian Tire has agreed to implement more training on Indigenous stereotypes and racial profiling and review its complaint process to make sure it has distinct steps to address discrimination allegations.

The settlement includes confidential financial compensation, a portion of which Dawn Wilson says she will donate to the Union of BC Indian Chiefs to commission a study into the problem of Indigenous consumer racial profiling in Canada.

The store and the security company have both agreed that any loss prevention measures will have objective, race-neutral criteria and they will implement training on discrimination and unconscious bias.

They’ll also collect data on discrimination complaints.

Dawn Wilson says in an interview that she and her dad faced “hurdles at every level” when trying for years to get someone to listen to them about their complaint.

She says it shows the need for wholesale change.

“This was a systemic issue, so we wanted systemic change. Something that’s not just going to happen for my Dad and I, but for anybody coming after us, and that’s what we feel like happened,” she says.

“There were a lot of different things that happened in the settlement, and it seems like it’s a very holistic approach to tackle some of these really big issues.”

The pair, who are members of the Heiltsuk Nation, were shopping at the store in 2020 when a security guard publicly searched Richard Wilson’s bag.

When Dawn Wilson raised concerns, a store employee replied that his father “taught him the difference between an Indian and a native: an Indian comes from the reserve and begs and steals.”

The human rights complaint was scheduled to be heard in October.

The washing ceremony on Tuesday is based on an Indigenous concept which means “to turn things around and make things right again.”

Dawn Wilson said the idea of the public ceremony is to validate what happened and is “a physical way of letting go of all that pain and hurt.”

“I’m actually really happy that it’s happening. I think it’s amazing that Blackbird and Canadian Tire have agreed to this, and I wholeheartedly accept their apology,” she said.

As part of the human rights complaint, the Heiltsuk Nation commissioned a report on consumer racial profiling, which in part called for more study of the issue.

Dawn Wilson said it’s important some of the settlement money go to a larger study so there’s more data for others to lean on.

“They may not have as much support as we did from Heiltsuk Tribal Council, and we just want to make sure that they have something to help them with this, because it can be an incredibly harmful process when you’re already feeling harmed,” she says.

She says they wanted to take as much pressure off complainants as possible to help them feel supported.

This report by Ashley Joannou and Darryl Greer, The Canadian Press, was first published May 19, 2026