Human rights treaties

1. Canada is a member of the Organization of American States which has developed a human rights instrument, the American Convention on Human Rights;
2. Canada has entered economic agreements with the U.S. and Mexico and plans to enter a joint asylum granting agreement with the U.S.;
3. Mexico has ratified, and the U.S. has signed, the American Convention on Human Rights;
4. The Convention offers enhanced protections for non-citizens with respect to certain rights, notably family rights and procedural rights;

1. Canada, through its government, its parliament and its courts, has habitually neglected United Nations Covenants and Conventions of justice in its treatment of non-citizens who came to Canada seeking protection;
2. Specifically, it has neglected to enact legislation in Parliament to embody in Canadian law the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Covenant on Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention against Torture;
3. As a consequence, habeas corpus and other elements of due process guaranteed to Canadians by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms are often denied by Canadian civil servants and Canadian courts to non-citizens who came to Canada seeking protection;
4. Further, such non-citizens have no simple and effective legal means of enforcing such rights;
5. As a further consequence, many such people have been deported from Canada in violation of one or more of the above UN Covenants and Conventions;
6. The Immigration Act and court decisions based on it are inconsistent with Canada's obligations under UN human rights treaties;

 the consequences of migration include serious abuses and injustices for migrant workers, especially migrant women and children;

1. The General Conference of the International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted a new protocol to the Forced Labour Convention in June 2014 in order to address gaps in the implementation of the Convention, and to protect vulnerable workers from abuse;
2. Canadian labour laws fail to adequately protect migrant workers, leaving them at risk of abuse, conditions of forced or compulsory labour, exploitation and human trafficking; this is a growing yet preventable problem;

1. The Canadian Council of Churches and the Inter-Church Committee for Refugees have cooperated in the preparation of a brief submitted by ICCR to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child about non-citizen children;
2. The CCR meets regularly with senior immigration officials;

1. The Federal Court of Canada has been extremely reticent to apply the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and international human rights obligations in the judicial review process for refugee claimants and non-residents;
2. Immigration and refugee practitioners are frustrated with the negative attitude of the Federal Court to refugee and immigration issues;
3. The Federal Court leave requirements and the process for certification for appeal to the Federal Court of Appeal afford less access to the Court by refugee claimants and immigrants than the average Canadian has to appeal a conviction for a traffic ticket;
4. The news media and notes produced before the Supreme Court of Canada have shown that there have been improper contacts between the Ministry of Justice and the Federal Court and there are currently inquiries by the Canadian Judicial Council and the Ministry of Justice;

1. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in its report invited Canada to draw on the resources of the OAS human rights system;
2. Training for IRB members in international human rights law is not given by a competent arms-length human rights body;

Recent family court decisions in B.C. and Ontario have provided that a child who comes under the jurisdiction of the Hague Convention and who is a refugee claimant in Canada could be returned to the country where she fears persecution prior to a determination of the refugee claim;

1. There is now an optional protocol to the Convention against Torture which provides for on-site visits to detention centres around the world and which is open to signatures by member states;
2. This protocol will not come into effect until 20 countries have ratified it and only six have currently ratified it;

1. The Human Rights Commission of the United Nations has ceased to exist and the new Human Rights Council has come into existence;
2. There are a large number of Special Rapporteurs and special procedures whose existence depends on resolutions of the Human Rights Commission and whose expertise we do not want to lose;