International review launched into Canadian Human Rights Commission

The institution responsible for protecting human rights here in Canada is now itself at the center of a special review by UN affiliated oversight body. The Canadian Human Rights Commission is at risk of losing its A status as the global alliance of national human rights institutions takes this quote unprecedented step following a complaint of anti black discrimination made by coalition of Canadian human rights organizations that includes the Black class action secretary. We're now joined by the chief executive officer, Nicholas Marcus Thompson. Thank you so much for being with us here today. I want to start first with how we got here. You call this move a blunt wake up call for Canada. This the journey to getting here has not been yesterday morning. This has been a long process, a long process of workers calling for change, a long process of organizations like us calling for systemic changes at the Canadian Human Rights Commission. And what we've seen is that since we've been calling for these changes, there has been some improvements. But what those improvements mean for Black people is it's it's not tangible enough. So, for example, if they have one Black person in leadership and then they hire a second one, then that's what they call as improvement. And they would say that that's 100% increase. So it's not a sustainable or tangible change. And, and this has been long coming, 20 years ago, former Supreme Court Justice La Forest, he issued his report on the Commission calling for a direct access model, removing the Commission as the gatekeeper, sending complaints directly to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. So what we're calling for is not new or out of the blue. Workers have been facing discrimination of the Commission for a long time. As a matter of fact, the Commission is not a deterrent to discrimination in the public service. It policies the entire public service on the Employment Equity Act and how it's being applied. So it has vast powers and it's at the top of the, the, the, the chain in terms of discriminating against workers. Now there's this international attention being placed not only on the Commission here, but on Canada and its reputation. What is this special review going to be doing? What is it going to be looking at? Well, the special review is going to be looking at what actions Canada has taken. It's going to be, first of all, the review period is from 2016 to 2022. And what we have brought to Gannery's attention is that during that period in time, Canada violated the Paris Principles, which is a set of principles adopted by the General Assembly that ensures national human rights institutions adhere to, in order to meet that, a status accreditation. So we submit based on the Commission's own admission that it is discriminated against its staff, based on the government's own admission that there is discrimination, based on the Senate Human Rights Committee's own findings that there has been discrimination at the Commission. We have submitted that that those admissions and the discrimination that took place at the Commission violates the Paris Principles, which requires non discrimination in order to meet that requirement. As part of your announcement here that this global organization responsible for accrediting and reviewing compliance with human rights standards is going to be now launching this special review here. You also have some calls to the Canadian government. Walk us through what these calls are. Sure. So the root part of the problem here is the Employment Equity Act, which essentially provides protection for underrepresented groups to ensure that they don't face discrimination. So we are, we have put forward a strong call to action to recognize Black people as its own employment equity group to ensure that Black people are not excluded from those promotional opportunities. We are seeing record promotions in the government right now, but we believe it that it is not sustainable, that it is only because of the work that we're doing. It is only because there's a legal action forcing the government to take action. But when all of that fades away, there's nothing holding the government to account, ensure that that these measures continue. So we're seeking recognition in the Employment Equity Act, which the government is already committed to. So we're calling on the Minister of Labor, Seamus Oregon, to bring those amendments to Parliament to immediately recognize Black people because the discrimination is continuing. The public service is still continuing to administer the Employment Equity Act with its, with its present flaws of excluding Black workers. We're also seeking to have a direct access model to the tribunal, removing the Canadian Human Rights Commission, but not removing it completely altering its functions to support workers to get to the tribunal because of its discriminatory pass. It's been so engulfed in discriminatory practices. We believe that it has, it is not equipped, particularly when there is a lot of the same leadership that's at the Commission. So we need to see that leadership change to be able to implement the solutions that's needed at the Commission. So those are two critical changes that we're calling for. But because there's so much discrimination in the public service, we want to see a Black equity Commission to be able to police the public service. Because right now the government is calling on those who've perpetrated discrimination to come up with the solutions and to address the discrimination. And of course they don't believe that there's a problem within the public service. I want to I do want to read a statement from the CHRC because we did reach out to the Canadian Human Rights Commission for comment here in a spokesperson saying quote, we welcome the subcommittee special review and look forward to providing them with information about our work addressing systemic anti black racism within our organization as an employer, in our complaints handling function and in our advocacy role as Canada's national human rights institution. Our submission will show that over the past six years, the Commission has made significant progress on how it supports people filing discrimination complaints based on race. The Commission also wants to add that it does operate independently from the government. I want to quickly just get your reaction, if possible. Sure. What the Commission is saying here is that we've made progress. In other words, we've discriminated less, and we're saying that that's not good enough. We have workers there who tell us that they're still facing discriminatory practices. They're still facing systemic barriers at the Commission. So discriminating less is not good enough. Well, Nicholas Marcus Thompson with the Black Class Action Secretary, thank you so much. We'll be following this closely as this special review gets underway. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you for having me. Thank you.