Today, many human rights commissions are threatened or are no longer in existence. This book argues in support of our human rights institutions, including the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights. These arguments debunk current challenges to our human rights commissions and tribunals. Further, they chronicle the ways in which governments have backed away from the project of growing a culture of human rights, and of maintaining the role of human rights commissions to promote and protect human rights. In sum, this book will help readers to evaluate criticism of human rights institutions so that Canadians can strengthen current systems and ensure that they are responding to today’s problems in the field of human rights.

Shelagh Day is a well-known Canadian human rights expert and advocate. She is a Director of the Poverty and Human Rights Centre, whose central goal is to strengthen the human rights of the poorest women. She is also the publisher of the Canadian Human Rights Reporter, the leading law reporter on statutory human rights in Canada, and the co-author of two books and numerous articles on women’s equality rights: Women and the Equality Deficit is the leading study of the impact on women of restructuring Canada’s social programs, and One Step Forward, Two Steps Back was the first examination of how the Charter’s equality rights guarantee works for women. With extensive experience in the international field, Shelagh Day has appeared on behalf of Canadian women before United Nations treaty bodies examining Canada’s compliance with its international human rights obligations. She is the former Director of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, the first President of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF), and a founder of the Court Challenges Program. In addition, she was a Vice-President of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NAC) at the time of the Charlottetown Constitutional Talks. Currently, Shelagh Day is the Special Advisor on Human Rights to the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL), and the Chair of the Human Rights Committee of the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action (FAFIA).

 

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Lucie Lamarche is a professor of law at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM). She is the former Gordon F Henderson Chair in Human Rights and the former Research Director of the Human Rights Research and Education Centre of the University of Ottawa.

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Ken Norman is a professor of Law at the University of Saskatchewan.

 

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Gwen Brodsky is a leading national and international expert on human rights law, with graduate degrees from Harvard Law School and Osgoode Hall. She practises, teaches, and writes in the areas of human rights and constitutional law and she has acted as counsel in many Charter equality rights cases. An adjunct professor in the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law, she has taught a course on social and economic rights and the Charter. Dr. Brodsky has written extensively about equality rights theory, the Charter, and access to justice problems experienced by members of disadvantaged groups. She is a Director of the Poverty and Human Rights Centre and she was LEAF’s first Litigation Director.

 

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Pearl Eliadis is a Montreal-based lawyer and lecturer. She has worked with human rights systems in six countries, including Canada. Eliadis teaches civil liberties at McGill University and is president of the Quebec Bar Association's Advisory Committee on Human Rights.

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Genevieve Leslie is a former employee of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission (1983–2012). She has occupied a variety of positions, including investigator/facilitator, supervisor of Public & Special Programs, and staff solicitor.

 

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Michelle Flaherty is a professor of law at the University of Ottawa and a part-time member of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. The author wishes to thank Lucie Lamarche, Leslie Reaume, Jennifer Trépanier, and David Wright for their very helpful feedback and suggestions.

 

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Maxwell Yalden is a Companion of the Order of Canada and an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa.

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Constance Backhouse is a professor of law, distinguished university professor, and university research chair at the University of Ottawa. She obtained her B.A. from the University of Manitoba (1972), her LL.B. from Osgoode Hall (1975), and her LL.M. from Harvard Law School (1979). She was called to the Ontario Bar in 1978. She teaches feminist law, criminal law, human rights, and labour law. She is the author of many award-winning legal history books, including Petticoats & Prejudice: Women and Law in Nineteenth-Century Canada (1991), Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canadian Law, 1900–1950 (1999) and The Heiress vs. the Establishment: Mrs. Campbell's Campaign for Legal Justice (2004). She received the Law Society Medal in 1998 and an Honorary Doctorate from the Law Society of Upper Canada in 2002. She has served as an elected bencher of the Law Society from 2002. She became a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2004.

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Rachel Cox is a professor of law at the Faculty of Political Science and Law of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) and a member of the Québec Bar.

 

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Richard Moon is Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Law at the University of Windsor. In addition to this book, he is the author of The Life and Death of Freedom of Expression (Toronto: UTP, 2024), Putting Faith in Hate: When Religion is the Source or Target of Hate Speech (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) and The Constitutional Protection of Freedom of Expression (Toronto: UTP, 2000); the editor of Law and Religious Pluralism in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2008); the co-editor of Religion and the Exercise of Public Authority (Oxford: Hart/Bloomsbury, 2016), Indigenous Spirituality and Religious Freedom (Toronto: UTP, 2024) and The Surprising Constitution (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2024); and the contributing editor to Canadian Constitutional Law (Toronto: Emond-Montgomery, multiple editions).

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Shaheen Azmi is the director of Policy, Outreach, and Education of the Ontario

Human Rights Commission.

 

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Paul Eid is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM), and a member of the Chaire de recherche en immigration, ethnicité et citoyenneté (CRIEC).

 

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Lorne Foster is the director of the graduate program in Public Policy Administration and Law (MPPAL), and a professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration (SPPA) and the Department of Equity Studies (DES) at York University.

 

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Les Jacobs is professor of law and society and political science, and director of the Institute for Social Research at York University. He is also executive director of the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, the country’s leading pan-Canadian think tank devoted to access-to-justice issues, housed at Osgoode Hall Law School. He has held a range of distinguished visiting appointments at other universities, including Harvard Law School; the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies; the Law Commission of Canada; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Toronto; Emory University; and Waseda Law School, Tokyo. His many other books include Rights and Deprivation (1993); The Democratic Politics of Vision (1997); Pursuing Equal Opportunities (2004); Balancing Competing Human Rights in a Diverse Society (2012); and Linking Global Trade and Human Rights: New Policy Space in Hard Economic Times (2014).

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Jennifer Carter, PhD, is Professor of new museologies, intangible heritage, and cultural objects in the Department of Art History at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM).

 

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Jennifer A Orange, B.A., LL.B., LL.M., Barrister and Solicitor (Ontario), is an adjunct professor and SJD candidate at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Law where she teaches International Human Rights Law and the Law of Armed Conflict.

 

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