Lau v. Village Food Markets and another, 2025 BCHRT 280
Date Issued: November 4, 2025
File: CS-003823
Indexed as: Lau v. Village Food Markets and another, 2025 BCHRT 280
IN THE MATTER OF THE HUMAN RIGHTS CODE,
RSBC 1996, c. 210 (as amended)
AND IN THE MATTER of a complaint before
the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal
BETWEEN:
Sau Chun Lau
COMPLAINANT
AND:
Village Food Markets and Dylan Pentland
RESPONDENTS
REASONS FOR DECISION
Tribunal Member: Andrew Robb
On their own behalf: Sau Chun Lau
On their own behalf: Dylan Pentland
Agent for the Respondent Village Food Markets: Ed Banys
Date of Hearing: July 23 and 24, 2025
Location of Hearing: Video conference via Microsoft Teams
I INTRODUCTION
[1] Sau Chun Lau filed a human rights complaint against Village Food Markets [VFM] and Dylan Pentland [together, the Respondents]. VFM operates a grocery store [the Store] and employs Mr. Pentland. Ms. Lau says the Respondents discriminated against her when she entered the Store without wearing a mask, on April 18, 2021, at a time when VFM required customers to wear a mask due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She says she was unable to wear a mask for reasons related to her disabilities. She says that when she entered the Store, VFM employees asked her to put a mask on, and she said she had a medical exemption, but they refused to accommodate her exemption. She says Mr. Pentland asked her for information about her medical exemption, and when she refused to provide it he asked her to leave the Store within five minutes.
[2] The Respondents deny discriminating and deny Ms. Lau’s account of what happened when she entered the Store. They say they were doing their best to comply with public health rules and they offered accommodations to those who could not wear masks. They say they reasonably accommodated Ms. Lau by giving her 15 minutes to complete her shopping, even though she was not wearing a mask.
[3] For the reasons set out below, I dismiss the complaint. I find Ms. Lau has not proven a connection between her disabilities and her ability to wear a mask for the amount of time she required to shop in the Store. This means that regardless of how the Respondents treated her when she came to the Store, her human rights complaint cannot succeed.
II Evidence
[4] Ms. Lau testified on her own behalf and called one other witness: her husband, Harry Lappa, who was with her when she entered the store on April 18, 2021. Mr. Pentland also testified, as did Ed Banys, who was the assistant manager of the Store at the time of the complaint, and is now the manager. Mr. Banys was not present when Ms. Lau came to the Store on April 18, 2021. He gave evidence about the Store’s masking policies at that time.
[5] There was some dispute about what exactly happened when Ms. Lau entered the Store, but I do not need to resolve the dispute for the purposes of this decision. It is not disputed that:
a. Ms. Lau entered the Store on April 18, 2021, without wearing a mask. At that time, VFM had a policy that customers not wearing masks would be asked to wear one, and if they refused they would be asked to leave the Store. Some VFM employees had discretion to give customers not wearing masks a limited amount of time to complete their shopping.
b. More than one VFM employee asked Ms. Lau to put on a mask. When she refused, one of the employees got Mr. Pentland from the back. He was the most senior VFM employee on duty at the time, and he spoke to Ms. Lau.
c. Mr. Pentland asked Ms. Lau to put on a mask. She said she had a medical exemption. He gave her a limited amount of time to complete her shopping and leave the Store.
[6] Since my decision turns on whether Ms. Lau has established that she faced disability-related barriers to wearing a mask, it is not necessary to set out further details about what happened on and after April 18, 2021. The remainder of this section summarises the evidence before me about Ms. Lau’s medical conditions and how they affect her ability to wear a mask.
[7] Ms. Lau had a stroke in 2020 and was diagnosed with thyroid cancer a few months later. She provided medical information showing doctors found nodules on her thyroid. She believes these nodules cause obstacles for breathing. She also provided documentation showing she has a history of migraines, metabolic disorders, and vascular disease. She testified that she was diagnosed with hypertension. Her human rights complaint said she also has asthma, but there was no evidence of this at the hearing, in Ms. Lau’s testimony or in the medical documents she provided. Ms. Lau says she often feels pain and fatigue, and she often takes longer than other people to do many of her activities of daily living.
[8] Ms. Lau testified that she tried to wear a mask on multiple occasions before she went to the Store, but found it had potentially dangerous effects on her. She says she is unable to breathe normally when she wears a mask, and she feels like she is drowning or gasping for air. Consequently, she says her heartbeat increases and she experiences palpitations, she sweats profusely, which can cause a rash, and her face turns red. She says her blood pressure increases and this increases the chance she will have another stroke. She says she has anxiety attacks when she has difficulty breathing and on one occasion when she tried to wear a mask she almost lost consciousness. She believes wearing a mask makes it difficult for her to breathe for reasons related to her medical conditions, which she says affect her blood flow and oxygen levels in her blood.
[9] Ms. Lau provided an expert report, dated June 7, 2021, by a person named Chris Schaefer. The report says Mr. Schaefer has expertise on occupational health and safety, particularly respirator training and fit testing. The report was prepared in support of a court application in Quebec, and does not refer to Ms. Lau or her medical conditions or circumstances. Ms. Lau frankly acknowledged that she found it online, on the website of an organisation called Action 4 Canada. Mr. Schaefer did not attend the hearing for cross-examination on his report. It does not appear that Ms. Lau notified him she would be relying on his report.
[10] Mr. Schaefer’s report says it was prepared at the request of a lawyer in Quebec, and it is about the hazard posed by wearing masks. It says the masks mandated in Quebec, during the pandemic, were non-medical “blue masks”, as opposed to respirator or medical masks which are designed to prevent contaminants from being inhaled. The report describes an experiment conducted by Mr. Schaefer which showed the mandated non-medical masks reduce the amount of oxygen available to people wearing them, as wearers continually “re-breathe” the air inside the mask. The report says this creates hazardous levels of carbon dioxide inside the mask, which the wearer continuously inhales. It concludes that these non-medical masks should be prohibited.
[11] I admitted Mr. Schaefer’s report into evidence at the hearing. I address the weight to be given to the report in the “Decision” section, below.
[12] Ms. Lau also provided, as part of her evidence, a magazine article dated May 9, 2023, called “The Harm Caused by Masks”, by Jeffrey H. Anderson. The article describes a scientific study suggesting that excess carbon dioxide breathed in by mask-wearers may have substantial ill effects on their health. I decided not to admit the article into evidence, and I have not considered it as part of Ms. Lau’s case. It reaches conclusions similar to those in Mr. Schaefer’s report, but unlike the report it does not provide information about the qualifications of the article’s author, or about the identity or the qualifications of the authors of the study referred to in the article. Nor does it say when that study was carried out. Without this information, I found the information in the article is not sufficiently reliable, and it would be unfair to the Respondents if I considered it.
[13] Ms. Lau did not provide any evidence from a physician or any other healthcare-provider or expert about her ability to wear a mask. She did not say whether her doctor, or anyone else, recommended that she should not wear a mask, or that anyone told her there was a connection between her disabilities and the symptoms she experienced when she tried to wear a mask. She believes there is such a connection based on information she found online. She did not identify the online resources she consulted, other than Mr. Schaefer’s report and the magazine article described above.
III DECISION
[14] Section 8 of the Human Rights Code applies to services customarily available to the public, which includes grocery stores. Section 8(1) says a person must not, without a bona fide and reasonable justification, deny to a person any accommodation, service or facility customarily available to the public, or discriminate against a person regarding any accommodation, service or facility customarily available to the public, because of the person’s physical or mental disability.
[15] To establish that the Respondents discriminated against her, Ms. Lau must prove:
a. She had a disability;
b. She experienced an adverse impact in the services she received from the Respondents; and
c. Her disability was a factor in the adverse impact.
Moore v. British Columbia (Education), 2012 SCC 61 at para. 33.
[16] To succeed in this complaint, Ms. Lau must prove her medical conditions were disabilities, within the meaning of the Code, and these disabilities affected her ability to wear a mask for the amount of time she required to shop in the Store. Any claim of disability discrimination arising from a requirement to wear a mask must begin by establishing that the complainant has a disability that interferes with their ability to wear the mask: The Customer v. The Store, 2021 BCHRT 39 at para. 14.
[17] As I understand her argument, Ms. Lau says her history of stroke and cancer, the nodules on her thyroid, and her metabolic disorders, vascular disease, migraines, and hypertension are all disabilities under the Code. She says these disabilities affect her breathing, and wearing a mask made it even more difficult for her to breathe, because it caused her to breathe in too much carbon dioxide and too little oxygen. She says the symptoms she experienced when she wore a mask, including her increased heartbeat and blood pressure, her anxiety, profuse sweating, and her face turning red, are triggered by her difficulties breathing, and the reduced level of oxygen in her blood.
[18] For the purposes of this decision I assume, without deciding, that Ms. Lau’s medical conditions are disabilities within the meaning of the Code. However, for the following reasons I find she has not established that these disabilities interfered with her ability to wear a mask for the time she needed to complete her shopping in the Store.
[19] I give little weight to Mr. Schaefer’s report. As I said, the report was prepared in 2021, for a court application in Quebec. There is no information before me about whether that court application was successful, or whether the opinions expressed in the report were ever accepted by any court or in any other legal proceeding. Even if I accepted that Mr. Schaefer is qualified to give the opinions in his report, in the absence of more current information I am not persuaded that those opinions have any probative value in Ms. Lau’s complaint. In particular I note the report was prepared over four years before the hearing of this complaint, and after it was prepared many people in Canada and elsewhere continued to wear what the report describes as non-medical face coverings or masks, in social and other settings. There is no information before me about whether this caused any negative consequences from the hazardous levels of carbon dioxide inhalation described in the report. It appears that the continued widespread use of these masks could be relevant to Mr. Schaefer’s conclusions. Considering this, and without hearing from Mr. Schaefer, I am not persuaded that I can rely on an opinion he gave in 2021 today.
[20] Even if I had given give more weight to Mr. Schaefer’s report, I am not persuaded that it supports Ms. Lau’s position that she was unable to wear a mask for reasons related to her disabilities. The report says some masks, including respirator masks, eliminate the health risks that the report says are associated with wearing blue, non-medical masks. At the hearing, Ms. Lau testified that she had not tried wearing a respirator mask. Based on the report, it would appear that if Ms. Lau wore a respirator mask, she would not face the same difficulties breathing that she experienced when she tried wearing other masks. In other words, even if I accepted Mr. Schaefer’s conclusions, and Ms. Lau’s evidence about her medical conditions, that would not necessarily lead to a finding that her medical conditions interfered with her ability to wear a mask.
[21] Other than Mr. Schaefer’s report, there is limited evidence before me that could explain the connection between Ms. Lau’s medical conditions and her difficulties with breathing, or the symptoms she reports experiencing when she wears a mask. The only other evidence she provided was in her own testimony.
[22] In her testimony, Ms. Lau said the nodules on her thyroid may have created obstacles to breathing, but she does not explain why she believes this, and there is no medical or other information before me that corroborates or explains this belief. She says her metabolic and vascular disorders mean she gets less oxygen in her blood than other people, and this affects her breathing, but again there is no medical information before me that confirms or explains this. The medical documents she provided to support her claim that she has disabilities do not say anything about her breathing, or her ability to wear a mask.
[23] Ms. Lau’s argument that masks prevent her from getting as much oxygen as she needs appears to be based on Mr. Schaefer’s report and on other information she found online. But other than Mr. Schaefer’s report and the magazine article that I decided not to admit into evidence, she did not list the online sources she consulted or identify their authors. Without this information, I cannot give any weight to her testimony about the information she found online. In general, medical information found online, which does not refer to a complainant’s own circumstances, and does not include details about the source or reliability of the information, will be insufficient to establish a connection between a person’s medical condition and their ability to wear a mask.
[24] I have no reason to doubt Ms. Lau’s evidence that she had difficulties breathing when she tried to wear a mask, or that as a result of these difficulties she experienced symptoms including an increased heart rate, profuse sweating, and anxiety. However, on the evidence before me, Ms. Lau has not proven a connection between her disabilities—namely her history of stroke, cancer, thyroid nodules, migraines, metabolic disorders, and vascular disease—and her breathing difficulties, or between her disabilities and the symptoms she experienced when she wore a mask.
[25] As part of her argument, Ms. Lau relies on two video recordings showing presentations given by a lawyer, in which the lawyer makes statements about how human rights laws should apply in cases involving mask rules. The lawyer says, essentially, that once a person says they have a medical exemption from wearing a mask, service-providers are not entitled to inquire about the basis for the exemption, or to limit the person’s access to services. Based on these video recordings, I understand Ms. Lau to argue that Mr. Pentland discriminated against her by asking her for information about her medical exemption, and both Respondents discriminated by limiting her access to the Store.
[26] I am not persuaded that the legal arguments in the video recordings relied on by Ms. Lau support her case. The Respondents’ response to Ms. Lau’s statement that she had a medical exemption, when she entered the Store, would be relevant to the question of whether they reasonably accommodated her. However, in decisions under the Code, the issue of whether a respondent reasonably accommodated a complainant does not arise unless the complainant first establishes that there was a connection between their protected characteristics—in Ms. Lau’s case, her disabilities—and the adverse treatment alleged in the complaint. Since I have found that she has not established a connection between her disabilities and her ability to wear a mask while shopping in the Store, I cannot consider whether the Respondents reasonably accommodated her.
[27] Ms. Lau has not proven that her disabilities interfere with her ability to wear a mask. This means she has not proven her disabilities were a factor in any adverse impact she experienced as a result of not wearing a mask.
IV CONCLUSION
[28] The complaint is dismissed.
Andrew Robb
Tribunal Member