Soccer league bans B.C. pre-teens from tournaments because team is too diverse

Brian Hutchinson | Aug 13, 2012 7:49 PM ET | Last Updated: Aug 14, 2012 10:21 AM ET
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JACOB ZINN / Surrey NOW
Debbie Christiansen’s son and his teammates aren’t allowed to compete in tournaments by the United Summer Soccer Association because of a controversial rule from the Indo-Canadian Soccer Association.

VANCOUVER — They are a diverse group of players, the lads from the B.C. Tigers summer soccer club. Some parents have dubbed the Surrey-based outfit “Team United Nations,” thanks to its ethnically mixed roster of pre-teen boys, who come from East Indian, Caucasian and African backgrounds.

No big surprise there. Surrey is one of the most multicultural cities in Canada, and the Tigers preach inclusion. Originally known as the Punjab Tigers, the club changed its name in 2009 to B.C. Tigers, “to allow for diversity and broadband [sic] its efforts to integrate [sic] into other communities,” according to a team website.

But the Tigers went too far, for some. The team of under-13-year-olds (U13) has been banned from official tournament play because its roster features too many kids who aren’t of East Indian descent.
What sort of message does this send to our kids? Not a very good one, I don’t think. What about tolerance and respect?

Rules written by the Indo-Canadian Soccer Association — the organization that operates Surrey’s United Summer Soccer Association — say that U13 teams may have a maximum of four “imports” on their rosters. Anyone found violating this rule “shall be subject to appear before a disciplinary committee” and may be fined, according to the soccer association’s rulebook.

The rules don’t define who qualifies as an “import.” In practice, it’s any player who is not Indo-Canadian.

The Tigers were rule-compliant until league officials added to its roster several registered players lacking any team affiliation. That put the team over the official “import” quota.

The transgression was overlooked until Tigers reached the semi-finals at a soccer tournament in June, according to Debbie Christiansen, whose son Blake plays for the squad. The team won its semi-final match against another Surrey summer league team, but the losing coach filed a protest, says Ms. Christiansen. Too many “imports.”

The championship game began without any acrimony or dispute. But 20 minutes in, a Tigers team official arrived and told his coach to remove the players from the pitch. After discussions, a compromise was reached: The Tigers would forfeit the game to their opponents, but the game would carry on.

And so it did, says Ms. Christiansen, for another 10 minutes. Then the opposing squad walked off the field. “Our whole team, even our Indo-Canadian players and their parents, were flabbergasted,” says Ms. Christiansen. “What sort of message does this send to our kids? Not a very good one, I don’t think. What about tolerance and respect?”

No one from the Indo-Canadian Soccer Association or the Tigers club responded Monday to interview requests.

The U13 Tigers players have spent the rest of the summer practising their skills and playing meaningless exhibition games. Ms. Christiansen, meanwhile, has sought legal opinion on the league’s “import” restrictions, which she thinks are unfair and discriminatory.
It’s hard for me to imagine any justification for this

But B.C.’s Human Rights Code allows for this sort of behaviour. According to the Code, a non-profit social organization can give “preference to members of [an] identifiable group or class of persons” if that organization “has as a primary purpose the promotion of the interests and welfare of an identifiable group or class of persons characterized by a physical or mental disability or by a common race, religion, age, sex, marital status, political belief, colour, ancestry or place of origin.”

Do Indo-Canadians really need to exclude others from the soccer pitch, in order to promote their own interests and welfare? Perhaps not. “It’s hard for me to imagine any justification for this,” says David Eby, executive director of the B.C. Civil Rights Association. But a challenge would likely fail, he adds, because the Code doesn’t require a non-profit group to actually demonstrate any basis on which to discriminate.

The Code “must be changed,” says Mr. Eby “because of this failure to link a legal justification to the discriminatory practice itself.”

Until then, soccer associations and other groups in B.C. can practice discrimination on ethnic and religious lines. Some have for years; others, such as the Vancouver-based Italian Canadian Sports Federation (ICSF), say they never will.

The ICSF “is an Italian club, but [it] has never had such rules in place,” says its president, Sam Pantusa. “ In fact, we openly welcome all ethnic groups.”

The British Columbia Christian Soccer League, on the other hand, describes in its constitution certain rules that would not pass muster in other provinces. Each team must be affiliated with at least one Christian church, and every team official and player “shall be a regular attender at the church which they represent.”

There are exceptions. Teams may apply to have included on their rosters up to three “Witness Clause imports,” the league’s term for players who do not attend any church.

But their approval is “not automatic,” according to the constitution. “Every season, a letter for each player must be sent to the President and must be approved by the Executive Committee… The spirit behind this rule is not to stack teams, but to reach out to others who do not know Christ and introduce them to Jesus according to the League Statement and Principles.”

National Post
bhutchinson@nationalpost.com

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