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Political Science Human Rights

Speaking Out on Human Rights

Debating Canada's Human Rights System

by (author) Pearl Eliadis

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2014
Category
Human Rights
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773591844
    Publish Date
    Apr 2014
    List Price
    $100.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780773543058
    Publish Date
    May 2014
    List Price
    $40.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780773543041
    Publish Date
    May 2014
    List Price
    $120.00

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Description

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.

About the author

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.

Pearl Eliadis' profile page