I welcome this opportunity to address this subcommittee.
The UPR has been a process that I've been involved in for some time, particularly as it pertains to Canada. The work I do is very much related to the UPR. I spend most of my time trying to implement the right to adequate housing domestically, so using international law, in the domestic context.
I want to start by commending the subcommittee for having agreed to study the ways in which the recommendations of the UPR can be implemented. I actually think this is very much in keeping with the concerns of civil society across Canada.
In the lead-up to Canada's UPR, I had the good fortune, along with Alex and some others, to travel across the country and meet with organizations from west to east--unfortunately not from north to south, but certainly from west to east--and we ended up meeting with over 125 organizations. What was so striking was that though they were there concerned with different issues, whether it was children's rights or women's rights or indigenous issues, there was unanimous consent, and the unanimous consent was on the issue of implementation, or rather on the issue of the lack of implementation, of international human rights obligations domestically.
What I'd like to do now, with my remaining minutes, is talk about Tanya. Who is Tanya? Tanya is one of my clients. She called me a few weeks ago, and she told me a bit about her life. She is currently working in a low-income job. She has three school-aged boys. After her divorce, she found it pretty difficult to find a place to live. She has a small income, a largish family, and she experienced a fair bit of discrimination in the private rental market. She has her name on a social housing waiting list. She was told it would take seven to ten years before she would get to the top of that list.
The only place she could find is a rundown house that she rents. It's in need of major repairs. The landlord refuses to do those repairs. She doesn't have the money to apply to the landlord-tenant board to make an application to get those repairs done.
Tanya lives in inadequate housing, and she knows that she is one crisis, one emergency, from falling into arrears or becoming homeless.
When Tanya calls me at my office, and she asks me, “What are my rights here? Don't I have the right to live in a decent place?”, what do I tell her?
I told her that Canada has signed and ratified treaties that include the right to adequate housing, including the UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. I told her that the international community has expressed grave concern about the situation of homelessness, inadequate housing, and poverty in Canada, and that in 1993, in 1998, in 1999, in 2005, in 2006, in 2008 and in 2009 the United Nations has told the Government of Canada that homelessness and inadequate housing must be addressed by implementing the right to adequate housing domestically.
I told her that a United Nations special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing was so concerned about the housing and homelessness in this country that he came here to investigate, and that he reiterated many of the same recommendations of the UN treaty monitoring bodies.
Then I told her about the UPR, that Canada's human rights record was reviewed, this time by states, and that the verdict and the recommendations were much the same as their predecessors'.
Tanya was elated. And I am not kidding; this is a true story. Maybe I didn't go on at quite this length, but in any event....
So she asked me the next inevitable question: “What's been done, and how do I get the right to adequate housing; where do I go?”
I think we in this room all know the answer to her question. There is nowhere for her to go. She could go to the landlord-tenant board but, as I already said, she doesn't have the money for that application. Even if she did, even if my organization could lend her the money, that board would say that claiming the right to adequate housing there is outside of their mandate.
She could try going to a provincial human rights tribunal, but it would be a similar situation: there is no codified right to adequate housing in provincial and territorial human rights legislation.
She could try a charter challenge, if she could get access to moneys for a charter challenge. The court challenges program doesn't exist any more for her type of claim. Even if she made it to court and made that section 15 or section 7 argument, the lawyers on the other side representing the government would argue that the right to adequate housing is not justiciable—a position, I might add, that is entirely out of step with the international community.
As Alex just said, there isn't even a minister we can point her to in terms of speaking to them.
So where is Tanya likely to end up? In your constituency offices, with MPs as the last-resort international human rights implementation mechanism.
Where will you send her? Right back to me.
I'm going to suggest that we have two options for Tanya. We can tell her that international human rights are lofty ideals, aspirations, or goals with no real-world significance, or we can roll up our sleeves and do the work to figure out meaningful options for implementing these rights. I think this subcommittee has wisely chosen the latter.
I would like to also suggest that the work that needs to be done isn't actually that hard. I think maybe I could suggest that it's somewhat simple. I think the first step is for MPs to understand that human rights are not just lofty ideals and principles. Human rights is a practice. It's a way of governance. It's a way for you to do your job.
What does human rights practice or governance mean? What does it look like? I think there are three core principles that can guide your thinking, your policy-making, your decision-making.
One, human rights practice is always about the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. Rights are obviously most important to those groups who are most vulnerable and disadvantaged, because they are most likely to suffer rights violations.
Two, human rights practice involves the setting of timelines and goals, benchmarks, really concrete things to aim for in order to change or better a situation. This is obviously particularly true in economic and social realms, where progress can in fact be charted and measured quite easily.
Three--and I think this is particularly important in light of our UPR discussions today--human rights practice ensures accountability. Someone--or someones--is accountable for reviewing human rights compliance and enforcement.
Putting these principles into practice, what can you do specifically?
I think we only need to look at the recommendations that came out of the UPR process and the treaty monitoring bodies, which have been repeatedly recommended by civil society.
Alex has already gone through many concrete recommendations, which I wholeheartedly support.
I also support the recommendations that Kathy Vandergrift brought to this subcommittee two days ago.
I would add to those the following. I think we do need to look at existing enforcement mechanisms in the country, assess them, review them, and make sure they're actually working to protect all human rights—civil, political, social, and economic. I think we do need--Alex referred to this--a new intergovernmental process for implementing international human rights obligations, and responding to concerns and recommendations with respect to the UPR and the treaty monitoring bodies.
Here's my main recommendation. I'm going to put something very practical on the table for you. I think we do need to develop a system or process that will help ensure that international human rights law and review and enforcement mechanisms are built into every relevant piece of legislation, particularly new legislation that's arising.
I want to deal with a very specific example that will be before you, Bill C-304. I don't know if any of you know of it. It's the bill that's on affordable, adequate, and accessible housing. It's a private member's bill. It calls for a national housing strategy. The bill is, itself, a response to treaty monitoring-body recommendations and the UPR. The way it can be viewed as an actual response to treaty-monitoring bodies' concerns and the UPR recommendations is that it includes the following elements.
It calls for the provincial, territorial, and federal ministers responsible for housing to meet and hammer out a national strategy, and they're to do it in consultation with indigenous groups, civil society, and municipal governments. It recognizes the most disadvantaged groups, and that their needs must be prioritized. It calls for the setting of timelines and targets for ending homelessness. And it calls for the development of a process for the independent review of complaints about possible violations of the right to adequate housing. It also builds into it a review mechanism for follow-up to anything the UN has said about the right to adequate housing in the country.
I would say that this is model legislation that directly responds to the concerns of treaty-monitoring bodies and the concerns of the Human Rights Council at the universal periodic review of Canada.
Of course, none of the recommendations that Alex has put on the table or that I have put on the table will solve Tanya's concerns immediately. But they will signal to Tanya that she lives in a country where all human rights are taken seriously, that someone is accountable, and that if she believes her rights have been violated, she has a place to go to tell her story, be heard, and have access to a remedy, if appropriate.
Thanks very much.