Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on March 30th, 2010

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Mr. Hiebert, please.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Vandergrift, for being with us today.

Your testimony was very informative. I appreciate the format you used in outlining the problems and the solutions that you recommend. It did raise a couple of questions for me that I hope you can clarify.

In your second proposed reform of the human rights policy process in Canada, you mentioned that there are two references to an obligation to fulfill our international treaties. One was at Treasury Board and the second was at departments, which have an obligation to evaluate whether or not their initiatives respect international human rights obligations.

Then you stated that those decisions in departments are being made by people without expertise in international agreements. I wonder if you could elaborate on that. How would you know they don't have expertise?

[Kathy Vandergrift]

My comments in this regard resulted after the Senate did the three-year study on children's rights. The government responded and said, “But we do look at children's rights.” I said, “Well, then, I want to know where.”

We looked at it, and there are two places under Treasury Board guidelines for policy formation. One is when they bring forward legislation, and one is sort of at the regulations level. In each case what it amounts to is a check-off box that we are not violating some international agreement. That check is done by officials in the justice department. But when officials check off on a policy....

Take as an example the national income program for children, which we think has some inequities in it. When the justice official checks that box off as that policy is going forward to cabinet, he is simply looking at whether we are doing some egregious violation of an international agreement. He isn't an expert in how that policy would affect children in the end, to make that kind of fuller assessment.

What some countries do is this: those policies are assessed from the perspective of how they will affect children, and that assessment goes forward to cabinet at the same time.

I think that's what we mean when we say if you did a rights impact assessment at the beginning, you could improve the policy-making process.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

What I heard you say, then, was that the justice officials don't really comprehend the consequences of our policy on our international obligations?

[Kathy Vandergrift]

They're not experts in the subject area. In other words, they review documents in a range of areas, so they're not experts necessarily in children's issues and children's programming.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

I see. So you would rather have experts in that particular field—

[Kathy Vandergrift]

That's right.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

—but you don't know for certain that these people don't have the knowledge of our international obligations.

[Kathy Vandergrift]

They are lawyers in the human rights division, so they certainly have some expertise about human rights law, but I think my bigger concern is that it's primarily a negative screen. We asked; it's to show that we aren't violating something, and it's--

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

So you would like to see something more proactive.

[Kathy Vandergrift]

That's right: how is it contributing? Many of the human rights treaties that we have signed deal with areas of social economic rights. How are we contributing? For example, to reduce child poverty, how does this proposal contribute to that?

That kind of an assessment is not done.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

All right.

A little bit later on you mentioned that the charter does not address children's rights, but then in answer to a question from one of my colleagues, you said that the charter does have an obligation to establish equitable treatment for children.

[Kathy Vandergrift]

The area of equitable treatment is one that.... There's a general provision in the charter, so even under the charter, as I said, we have a limited federal obligation. Children are not mentioned anywhere in the charter, and there are very few cases that try to apply the charter to children's rights.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

But do they need to be mentioned to be covered? Does the charter not cover all Canadians, regardless of age?

[Kathy Vandergrift]

It covers all, but one of the unique aspects of children's rights is a balancing between the need for protection and the need for self-determination. The charter is much more along the lines of people's rights of self-determination.

The charter was adopted before the Convention on the Rights of the Child; another reason. Increasingly, the charter is being interpreted to take into account the conventions, but that's a long and detailed process, and I would submit it would be helped by legislation from Parliament that would clarify those issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Actually, we're out of time, unfortunately, Mr. Hiebert.

Mr. Oliphant.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you not only for being here but for your life's work. It's impressive, and we're glad you do it, glad you bring these things here.

I want to pull us right into the UNUPR. You have raised lots of other issues too, which I think are good. I can read children into all the recommendations if I want to, but explicitly I can only find about seven recommendations that talk about either children or families. All of them have been accepted by Canada, so that then tells us we have an agenda to do. All seven, and they relate to violence against women and children, sexual exploitation, juvenile detainees, economic rights, low-income families, and aboriginal women and girls. Those are the things that I find here.

What I'm concerned about, and would like your comments on, is this: are you happy enough with the UNUPR process or do you think it too needs to be revised because the children's lens was not adequately...?

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I don't think the lens of children's rights was not really put on this. Maybe Canada has a role internationally to raise this issue to get back, so we will be criticized, but....

[Kathy Vandergrift]

Well, obviously I would love to see more focus on children, but I'm going to say to you that even our participation as a coalition in this process was to focus on the general mechanisms for implementing human rights in Canada, not so much on children. We will focus on children very specifically in front of the UN committee on children's rights, because that's where the expertise lies.

Our frustration is that until the general mechanisms for human rights in Canada improve, we aren't going to make progress on children's rights either, or women's rights. There are certainly areas where those overlap. CEDAW looks at girls, for example.

When we participated in this process, what we wanted to see out of the universal periodic review was a commitment by Canada to improve the process. In that regard we think there are strong recommendations in this report. Our concern now is are they being implemented? We're one year after, and we have not seen one action being taken to implement them. We have four years. It takes a long time to get something in place. My concern is that by the time we hit the next review, we probably will just begin to be thinking about a change versus having something substantive in place.

We were very concerned about the way Canada proceeded with the third report under children's rights, which was after the UPR. Here was an example to do a better job, and that's why I highlighted it for you. Then we received a letter from the minister, actually saying they were going to improve the process through the UPR, but we haven't seen a step. So our plea with you is to help us improve that general process through the UPR. Then we'll deal with children's rights, primarily before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Domestically we have a system of human rights legislation, provincially, territorially, and federally. Can children--this is out of my ignorance--bring human rights complaints to a commission or tribunal?

[Kathy Vandergrift]

It does not happen very often. I mentioned the first example...because we decided the situation for aboriginal children was so severe that we were going to use every avenue. As you know, the first appeal for children is being made now.

Part of my submission was to tell you that the way that is being handled, I don't think the commission is an appropriate forum for children's rights. Or something needs to change; it was.... I mean, the delays: children will be well through child welfare before they ever get a resolution.

It was excessively confrontational. There was no focus on the children. The lawyers were focused on damaging the credibility of the organization that brought forward the complaint, and the organization was de-funded in the process.

If this is how the commission is going to protect children's rights, I don't know who else is going to bring a complaint, frankly.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

I was on a human rights commission. I ended up as the chair of one. We never had a complaint from a child, but I think we could have, within our legislation, designed a non-adversarial process that would have actually been child-friendly.

[Kathy Vandergrift]

If the commission is going to hear more cases relating to children, then they need a child-friendly process.

What I would point you to at the provincial level concerns complaints to children's advocates. New Brunswick, Ontario, and Saskatchewan have very good records of complaints being made to children's advocates, and they work very cooperatively--not with lots and lots of lawyers--to solve the problems.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Not that there are any lawyers in the room.

[Kathy Vandergrift]

Oh, sorry, I don't mean to....