VANCOUVER -- When Britta Nitychoruk got a text from a friend with some screenshots from the Facebook page of someone she's known a long time, she was shocked.
“My jaw dropped,” she told CTV News Vancouver. “I was absolutely floored.”
The post reads, in part: “Black lives DO NOT MATTER. They do not belong in white countries.”
It goes on to say: “They have been given every handout and every opportunity but still choose to loot, burn, rape and twerk in the streets while they live on white people’s tax dollars.”
Nitychoruk said she then scrolled through the woman’s Facebook page and found many posts “about how Black lives don’t matter, white power, all this Nazi stuff.”
Until Friday, the woman worked for ICBC and, according to her LinkedIn account, was a claims specialist. CTV News is not identifying her, pending information, but has reached out to her.
Nitychoruk and others sent complaints to ICBC about the posts, and the insurance company responded by launching an investigation that ended with the woman's employment being terminated, according to statements provided to CTV News Friday.
In its first statement, the company said it was "shocked and dismayed" by the content of the posts, which it had learned about on social media on Thursday. The company said it had started a "multi-stage investigation."
In a second statement issued Friday afternoon, ICBC said its investigation was complete.
"We have learned that the posts were in fact made by an employee, and that person is no longer an employee at ICBC," the company said. "We do not tolerate any behaviour of this kind. ICBC remains committed to providing a safe, respectful and inclusive workplace that celebrates the cultural diversity of our employees and customers. We sincerely regret the harm that these posts have caused.”
Other posts on the woman's page suggested making the Nazi salute “great again” by using it as a way to prevent germ transfer, and another read: “the Holocaust didn’t happen but it should have.”
“If I was Black or Jewish and I had put in a claim in the past seven years, I would be sitting here wondering if I’ve been discriminated against,” Nitychoruk said.
She said she would also like to see some accountability from Facebook.
“It’s just really shocking to me that a platform like Facebook allows this racism to be alive,” Nitychoruk said. “They didn’t flag her post, they didn’t take it down and she’s able to say things like Black lives don’t matter, things against Jewish people and that the Holocaust didn’t matter.”
She said she and friends can no longer find the woman’s Facebook page, and she’s unsure whether it’s been deleted or they’ve been blocked.
As for ICBC, Nitychoruk wants a full audit of all the cases the woman has handled to make sure there’s no discrimination.
“(She works) with the public, (she works) with ICBC, there’s claims involved, there’s people’s insurance,” Nitychoruk said. “That’s why, to me, I was like, ‘Everybody needs to know about this, because this is something that’s not OK.’”
Asked whether it would be conducting such an audit, ICBC told CTV News it "will do an evaluation and consider if a review of any case files is necessary."