A disabled Aboriginal man is filing a human rights complaint after allegedly being kicked off a Saskatoon transit bus last week.
Leslie Tataquason says he, his roommate, Karen Akan, and her two-year-old son, Kisihs Akan, boarded the crowded bus last Wednesday.
After a woman agreed to give them her seat, Tataquason says the bus driver started swearing at them and giving them angry looks.
According to Tataquason, she told them, “You people don’t even know how to use please and thank you.”
Tataquason says he ended up confronting the driver and started making a call to her supervisor.
“I was on the bus actually phoning the supervisor about her yelling and screaming at us for no reason,” he says. “And there was a lot of people on the bus at the time. And that embarrassed me – it humiliated me.”
He says that’s when he was ordered off the bus.
But as he was snapping photos of her while he was leaving, he alleges the driver closed the doors on him and attempted to drive off while he was still trapped.
“In my opinion, she kicked me off in an unsafe manner. What if I got hurt? Because she attempted to drive off.”
Akan and her son were also allegedly kicked off the bus a minute later.
Tataquason wears a knee brace and says is supposed to stay off his knee but was forced to make the 45-minute walk home.
Saskatoon Transit says an internal investigation of the incident is underway including a review of the security video and audio on the bus.
In a statement, city solicitor Patricia Warwick says: “Our initial investigation has revealed the operator did not swear or make racial slurs.”
Warwick says a driver may order a person off a transit bus if that person is bullying passengers, being rude or abusive to passengers or the driver.
In 2008, Tataquason won a human rights complaint after a Saskatoon hotel owner kicked him out of his restaurant and told him it wasn’t a friendship centre.