Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon. I thank the subcommittee for inviting the Canadian Human Rights Commission to participate in your discussion of policies and practices of human rights commissions internationally and in Canada. I am David Langtry and I am Deputy Chief C

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes. Thank you. I'll deal first with the UPR, and then I would ask to Mr. Sigouin to answer in terms of the Organization of American States, since he is the one who has been doing most of the work with the OAS. Regarding the UPR process, indeed the Canadian Human Rights Commis

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  That's correct. The tribunal hears any cases that are referred to it by the Canadian Human Rights Commission. We do not make a decision on the merits of the case. We are a screening body. So when we receive complaints, we consider them, and we may decide that we will not deal wit

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes, thank you for that question. The A status is, as I mentioned, the highest status. There are 88 of those. We also have B status at the ICC, which are near to being Paris Principles-compliant but don't fully meet each of the requirements in the Paris Principles. They're accor

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Basically, the Paris Principles--which we can certainly provide to you--are a set of standards to make sure that a commission is, for example, independent of government, so it's not an arm of government and it can act independently. It has to be national in scope; so the provinci

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes. Interestingly, as you may be aware, all provinces and territories have some degree of social condition, either expressly stated, or an aspect of social condition. The Canadian Human Rights Act does not have a social condition provision in it. In our annual report in 2003, we

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  That's an interesting question. I would have to say that certainly in our submission on the UPR we had highlighted aspects of social equality and social condition, but we had also particularly focused, if I might say, on aboriginal issues. We made specific reference. By the way

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you. Certainly it has been the position of the commission. As you know, we did table a special report to Parliament last Thursday, which we're pleased to provide to you as well. It really talked about the balancing, in saying that in virtually all jurisdictions there is a

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Yes.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you for the question. I appreciate the opportunity, albeit briefly, to describe our processes. As you well know, of course, we are an administrative tribunal, and as such are subject to the rules of procedural fairness. All of our decisions are subject to review on judici

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  We have operating procedures that we follow, certainly, which are more in terms of the time periods within which complaints and responses must be filed and so on.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The legal tactics, if you will, are conducted in the same way before the tribunal in virtually every case. When we would make any kind of special request, we have to establish that before the tribunal. As you know, there are no hearings at the commission.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  On one occasion when an application was made before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to permit one of the witnesses to give evidence, our lawyer had to state the case as to why a great exception would be made to the usual. The foundation of that was based on concerns of potenti

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Perhaps I might be permitted to respond to the preamble before the question. The fact of the matter is that some of the information that has been in the media and some of the descriptions of what we have done we feel are untrue. As part of our special report, we have detailed wh

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I can honestly say I'm not aware of what awards Richard Warman has received. As you know, we're not the tribunal. I do not know. I do not have a number. We can certainly look into that. I certainly have no knowledge of any amounts the commission has paid to Richard Warman. I'm