Official statements from the OHRC
While receiving a COVID-19 vaccine remains voluntary, the OHRC takes the position that mandating and requiring proof of vaccination to protect people at work or when receiving services is generally permissible under the Human Rights Code (Code) as long as protections are put in place to make sure people who are unable to be vaccinated for Code-related reasons are reasonably accommodated.
This past year, the OHRC has repeatedly denounced the escalating hate that is targeting religious and racialized communities. It is essential that we all take steps, and take them quickly, to stand in solidarity, as individuals and through our organizations, to call out Islamophobia and racism and reject the hatred and the violence it begets.
The OHRC joins community calls for governments to review hate crime laws to ensure these laws are responsive to the lived realities of hate activity across Canada, and enforcement to ensure that police are doing what is necessary to support communities in distress and keep communities safe.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) stands with Indigenous communities across Canada in their outrage and mourning after 751 unmarked graves were located on the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan.
This horrific and senseless act further underlines why discrimination based on creed and racism must be unequivocally condemned as deplorable and in violation of core values and beliefs as a society.
To keep Ontario’s people and communities safe, it is critical for Ontario’s justice sector to once again make sure the prison custody numbers come down and stay down.
The OHRC is concerned about accounts from members of Ontario’s South Asian communities of hate and stigmatization in reaction to the ongoing COVID-19 humanitarian crisis in India.
The OHRC is concerned that the most recent expansion of police discretionary power to enforce the latest “stay-at-home order” will likely result in a disproportionate impact on members of marginalized and vulnerable communities.
The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) urgently calls on the government to clarify the status of the Adult Critical Care Clinical Emergency Standard of Care for Major Surge protocol (the Emergency Standard of Care) that was circulated to hospitals in January. The government must also confirm that the Health Care Consent Act prevails to protect the rights of patients and families at this time.
"COVID-19 fears are fanning the flames of racism in Kenora,” an op-ed by Chief Commissioner Ena Chadha, was published on March 1, 2021 on TVO.org.
