Human rights panel orders Winnipeg landlord to pay tenant for racist, sexist remarks

A human rights commission in Manitoba has ordered a landlord to pay $15,000 to a young mother who was harassed because she was pregnant and had a Black boyfriend.

The Manitoba Human Rights Adjudication Panel decision says Brandi Richardson was raising her three-year-old daughter and 12-year-old sister when she moved into a Winnipeg apartment in 2016.

The ruling found that from the time she applied for the apartment and throughout the tenancy, Richardson faced sexist, racist and classist conduct from Kirkwall Properties’ owner Wilma Galbraith.

The panel heard how the landlord repeatedly called Richardson a whore, used racist terms towards her boyfriend and used a racist word to describe her unborn child.

The decision says it was a “poisoned tenancy” that forced the vulnerable mother to move out within a year.

Kirkwall Properties and Wilma Galbraith did not attend the hearing but filed an unsworn, handwritten reply denying the allegations.

“Galbraith’s crude, humiliating, and demeaning insults together with name calling and taunting attempted to drive the complainant out of the apartment building,” Tracey Epp, the adjudicator, said in her ruling.