OTTAWA -- "I have as orders tonight that black people who aren't regulars here can't come into the bar," a bouncer at a bar tells a group of black men.

The video showing the white man barring the black customers from Le Fou du Roi bar in Gatineau, across the river from Ottawa, ignited a firestorm when it was posted to social media last week.

But one of the bar's owners said the men were turned away at the door last Friday because of several recent brawls between ethnic minorities.

The woman who recorded the video, and who wishes to remain anonymous, said the move was utter discrimination.

"I would call this racism, discrimination, an injustice," the woman told QMI Agency. "We're people just like everyone else."

But bar co-owner Brigitte Van Houtte said their bouncers have been more vigilant ever since a major brawl broke out three weeks ago.

The video shows the bouncer calmly explaining to the four black men why they wouldn't be getting in.

Shortly after, bar employees called police to intervene.

But when the group complained they were being discriminated against, officers said they were powerless to help because the bar was privately owned.

"As a police officer, there's nothing I can do," the cop tells them in the video.

The men can choose, instead, to file a human rights complaint against the local watering hole.