Opinion: Anti-vaxx realtor claims not hiring him to sell home is 'discrimination'

As Vancouver's Corduroy restaurant had their business and liquor licenses yanked due to blatantly contravening the Public Health Order regarding mask wearing, a silent minority of other business owners are quietly hoping their anti-vaxx stances won't hurt their sales.

I am here to tell you that they will, and I have the receipts. Tens of thousands of dollars worth.

A couple months ago my family decided to sell our house, so we started looking around for a realtor to make it happen for us.

Not two days later, a flyer arrived in our mailbox telling us about an agent who had just helped sell a house for a neighbour three doors down. The flyer said the home (which had an almost identical assessment as ours) sold for more than the asking price, and that if we were looking to sell we should give them a call.

So I called the guy whose smiling face sat next to the words "SOLD OVER ASKING!". We'll call him Chad.

Chad seemed friendly enough and knowledgeable on that initial call, and seeing as he knew the neighbourhood and had already sold a house near ours I figured we should meet up and see if he was a fit for us. We planned to move out first and then list our house, so I told him I'd email him when we were about to vacate it.

As we were finishing up our move Chad sent an email asking if we could meet up to discuss him selling our home. I responded by asking him if he was double vaccinated, and he responded with "I am not double vaccinated yet."

He went on to say that "If you feel more comfortable, I can wear a mask when we meet or we can do the signing [to bring him on as our realtor] through electronic signatures. Please let me know what you feel comfortable with."

His use of the word "yet" regarding being double vaccinated might lead someone else to believe that he had a single dose, but seeing as I'm a skeptical journalist who asks a lot of questions, my BS detector started ringing. So I asked him if he'd chosen not to get vaccinated at all.

He told me yes, he decided not to.

It was at that point that I decided I didn't want to give tens of thousands of dollars to this person who isn't helping us collectively get out of this mess that is a global pandemic. You're either in or you're out at this point, and if you're out I'm not going to hire you to make easy money off of any of my investments.

I very politely let Chad know that we'd be finding another realtor to work with, and thanked him for his time.

His written response was that the decision was "discriminatory," and after my eyeballs went back into their sockets I let him know that if he truly felt like he was being discriminated against I'd strongly recommend he file a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal. I sent him the link to where he could do that online, and I didn't hear back from him.

The realtor we hired instead of Chad is double vaccinated, and she made a pretty penny when she sold our house for over the asking price. I have since recommended her services to a couple of people who are looking to buy and sell.

I'm still waiting to see the human rights complaint that claims my not hiring a contractor because they're a selfish weasel who tells half-truths to prospective clients is discriminatory.