Video captures woman's racist tirade at B.C. Shoppers Drug Mart

Racist rant not unusual, experts say Video of a customer's racist rant at Shoppers Drug Mart has gone viral – and the person who posted it has become a target for hate as well.

Burnaby, B.C. - A video of a woman's racist tirade towards staff at a B.C. Shoppers Drug Mart has gone viral.

The video was recorded Monday night by a customer named Allen at the Shoppers on Kingsway and McMurray Avenue in Burnaby. It shows a woman telling a staff member to speak English in Canada, and to speak Chinese somewhere else.

The man who recorded the video told CTV News he decided to publish it online to "show this type of behaviour is not OK."

"I just felt it was really ignorant and I felt sad for the employees who were getting verbally abused like this," Allen said.

The video has since been shared more than 10,000 times on Facebook and has received almost 7,000 comments, some mad at the woman he recorded and others mad at Allen. He requested that he only be identified by his first name for safety reasons.

He said he wanted to spark a conversation about a problem he says is more common than most people would like to think.

Shumeil Javed, a customer of the store where the tirade happened, saw the video online and was compelled to let the employees know they are not alone.

"Living in Burnaby, that is my responsibility to come and reach out to the people. Wherever we see hatred or any racism we need to step up," said Javed.

On the streets, people were also disgusted at what they saw.

"This is not acceptable in this country. This is a diverse country," said Hakim Nazem.

Yet racism is still a big issue. According to Statistics Canada, 2,073 hate crimes were reported in 2017, followed by another 1,798 last year.

John Paul Catugnal, an assistant professor at UBC in the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, says social media posts like Allen's shine a light on a problem that's always been present in Canada.

"Canada historically was imagined as a white settler nation and that continues in the kinds of attitudes we see. It's more visible because of social media and so the virality of this video is part of why it seems it's getting worse," said Catungal.

Burnaby RCMP said the incident has not been reported to the detachment.