A Canadian actor and comedian is speaking up about an incident involving a police officer that he claims was racist and not representative of the country he wants to live in.
On Saturday, Andrew Phung, one of the stars of the CBC sitcom 'Kim's Convenience', tells Newstalk 1010 he was headed to the Rogers Centre for the Blue Jays game when he saw a police officer yell at a driver.
Phung was waiting to cross the intersection of Rees Street and Lakeshore Boulevard with a group of about 20 other people when the light changed, and a driver he described as a person of colour hesitated to pull through the intersection.
He says the on-duty police officer shouted for the driver to proceed, which the person did, but as the officer was walking back toward the sidewalk, Phung tellls Newstalk he heard the cop say, ``If you can't drive, go back to your country.''
Phung said he responded by shouting, ``That's not cool.''
That's when he says two men beside him chimed in, "Nope, totally cool. If you can't drive, go back to you f---ing country."
He says the comedian in him burst out and he proceeded to ask them why they thought driving ability equated citizenship in this country.
Phung speculates that the driver hesitated because the intersection has two sets of lights that are close together, and the other set of lights were red.
"I think as a whole we can all agree that we've all been confused before in Toronto traffic,'' Phung said. "It was just so disappointing to see this coming from a police officer,'' said Phung.
``They're the moral backbone of our community, they uphold the law. So when you see a police officer doing that, it empowered two other people to join in on that racism.''
Toronto Police are looking into the incident.
With files from The Canadian Press