Speaking Out on Human Rights
Speaking Out on Human Rights

Author: Pearl Eliadis

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2014-04-01

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 0773591842

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Canadians like to see themselves as champions of human rights in the international community. Closer to home, however, the human rights system in Canada - particularly its public institutions such as commissions and tribunals - has been the object of sustained debate and vehement criticism, based largely on widespread myths about how it works. In Speaking Out on Human Rights, Pearl Eliadis explodes these myths, analysing the pervasive distortions and errors on which they depend. Canada's human rights system, a unique legal tradition operating within a powerful modern constitution, is a fundamental mechanism for ensuring the practical application of our national commitment to tolerance and inclusion. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Canada's leading human rights experts and extensive original research, Eliadis explores the evolution of commissions and tribunals as vehicles of public policy and considers their mandate to mediate rights conflicts in such contested areas as hate speech, religious freedoms, and sexuality. She provides a frank assessment of how Canada's human rights system functions and argues that misplaced critiques have prevented urgent and necessary discussions about the reforms that are needed to improve fairness and equality before the law and to ensure institutional independence, impartiality, and competence. Speaking Out on Human Rights shows how our human rights system plays a unique and important role in the rights revolution both in Canada and internationally and offers promising avenues for its future development.

A History of Human Rights in Canada
A History of Human Rights in Canada

Author: Janet Miron

Publisher: Canadian Scholars’ Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1551303566

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Human rights, equality, and social justice are at the forefront of public concern and political debate in Canada. Global events--especially the "war on terrorism"―have fostered further interest in the abuse of human rights, especially when sanctioned or perpetuated by democratic governments. This groundbreaking contributed volume seeks to shed light on this topic by uniting original essays that examine the history of human rights in Canada. Contributors explore a variety of themes integral to the post-confederation period, including immigration and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, disability, state formation, and provincial-federal relations. Three key issues emerge throughout: incidents of discrimination in both government and society, the efforts of human rights and civil liberties activists to create a more open and tolerant society, and the implementation of state legislation designed to protect or enhance civil rights.

Repression and Resistance
Repression and Resistance

Author: Ross Lambertson

Publisher:

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 523

ISBN-13: 0802089216

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Examining the history of human rights in Canada from 1930 to 1960, the period just before the emergence of contemporary human rights groups, Repression and Resistance focuses on the activists who fought against what they perceived to be the major human rights injustices of the time: the Quebec anti-communist padlock law, the violation of civil liberties during the war, the post-war attempt to deport Japanese Canadians, campaigns to obtain effective anti-discrimination legislation, civil liberties violations during the Cold War, and the struggle to obtain a Bill of Rights. Using newspaper files, government documents, collections of personal papers, and interviews with former political activists, Ross Lambertson demonstrates how certain Canadians – including members of ethnic, labour, religious, civil libertarian, and other organizations – were sufficiently "aroused by injustice" so as to fight for human rights. The book shows how these different activists and their organizations were inter-related, but also how, at the same time, they were very often separated by ideological, cultural, and geographic divisions.

Advocating for Palestine in Canada
Advocating for Palestine in Canada

Author: Emily Regan Wills

Publisher: Fernwood Publishing

Published: 2022-05-31T00:00:00Z

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1773634909

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Why is it so difficult to advocate for Palestine in Canada and what can we learn from the movement’s successes? This account of Palestine solidarity activism in Canada grapples with these questions through a wide-ranging exploration of the movement’s different actors, approaches and fields of engagement, along with its connections to different national and transnational struggles against racism, imperialism and colonialism. Led by a coalition of students, labour unions, church groups, left wing activists, progressive presses, human rights organizations, academic associations and Palestinian and Jewish community groups, Palestine solidarity activism is on the rise in Canada and Canadians are more aware of the issues than ever before. Palestine solidarity activists are also under siege as never before. The movement advocating for Palestinian rights is forced to contend with relentless political condemnation, media blackouts, administrative roadblocks, coordinated smear campaigns, individual threats, legal intimidation and institutional silencing. Through this book and the experiences of the contributing authors in it, many seasoned veterans of the movement, Advocating for Palestine in Canada offers an indispensable and often first-hand view into the complex social and historical forces at work in one of our era’s most urgent debates, and one which could determine the course of what it means to be Canadian going forward.

Debating Rights Inflation in Canada
Debating Rights Inflation in Canada

Author: Dominique Clément

Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1771122765

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Human rights has become the dominant vernacular for framing social problems around the world. In this book, Dominique Clément presents a paradox in politics, law, and social practice: he argues that whereas framing grievances as human rights violations has become an effective strategy, the increasing appropriation of rights-talk to frame any and all grievances undermines attempts to address systemic social problems. His argument is followed by commentator response from several leading human rights scholars and practitioners in Canada and abroad who bridge the divide between academia, public policy, and practice.

Women and the Canadian Human Rights Act
Women and the Canadian Human Rights Act

Author: Canada. Status of Women Canada

Publisher: Status of Women

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13:

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The first report in this compilation examines whether the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) should contain an open-ended clause that would prohibit discrimination on grounds other than those specifically listed in the Act. The second report examines whether, and how, social & economic rights can be effectively protected under the CHRA. It reviews findings & recommendations of United Nations treaty monitoring bodies, studies the issue from a domestic perspective, and considers how new social & economic rights guarantees under the CHRA should be formulated. The third report discusses whether adding "social condition" to the CHRA's grounds of discrimination would provide protection from discrimination occurring because of the negative stereotyping of people with low incomes. The final report analyzes 453 sexual harassment complaints filed by women against both corporate & individual respondents between 1978 and 1993. It examines dispositions, remedies, length of time to case resolution, and the monetary compensation awarded.

Arabs in Canada
Arabs in Canada

Author: Raja G. Khouri

Publisher: Virago Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13:

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This groundbreaking work identifies the challenges facing the Canadian-Arab community vis-a-vis racism, integration, government policy and community building. The first Part provides a comprehensive snapshot of the position of Arabs in Canada in a post September 11 world. The second Part outlines the internal and external barriers to community development from a conflict management framework. Together, these primary narratives provide insight into an often-misunderstood community.