Many human rights advances start with the personal touch – with a conversation. In 2013-14, we met with and spoke with groups across Ontario. Whether it was a speech, talking on a panel, presenting a training seminar or hosting an event, we worked hard to send the message that the OHRC is a partner and resource for all Ontarians.
Chief Commissioner Barbara Hall met with groups or made presentations at over 45 events. Highlights included:
As well, OHRC staff made a variety of presentations and delivered training on a wide range of human rights issues. Here are some highlights:
Our ongoing challenge is to teach people across Ontario about their human rights and about emerging human rights issues. In a province as vast as ours, we are embracing technological solutions to connect with a growing number of Ontarians.
Our Human Rights 101 eLearning series continues to serve as a good introduction to human rights. We updated this in the past year, and continue to see a regular stream of learners signing on. We also updated our eLearning module on human rights and rental housing.
Modules are now online in English, French, Arabic, Italian, Korean, Spanish, Vietnamese, Punjabi, Tagalog and Urdu.
In 2013-2014, thousands of people signed on to our eLearning programs. Here are some highlights of the numbers of eLearners…
In the past year, we have added webinars to our toolkit for reaching widely dispersed audiences over the Internet. We hosted sessions on:
The Duty to Accommodate webinar was the first in what will be a continuing series of “Talking about human rights” webinars, which offer extended question and answer sessions based on previously viewed webinars.
To offer even further training options, each webinar is available on the OHRC website at www.ohrc.on.ca.
We continue to send printed copies of our publications across Ontario – but there is an easier way to get the information you need. All OHRC policies, reports, brochures and other printed materials can be downloaded from our website. Here are some of the top downloads in the past year:
Raising awareness of human rights is an important part of our work. In the past few years we have been working to build our social media networks so that we can reach out to a wider network of Ontarians. At time of writing, more than 4,300 people follow us @OntHumanRights and 2,100 “friends” on Facebook. You can also find us, and a lot of informative and accessible videos, on YouTube!
www.facebook.com/the.ohrc
@OntHumanRights
www.youtube.com/OntHumanRights
2013-2014 Printed Estimates ($'000) | Revised Budget March 31, 2014 ($'000) |
Actual Expenditures March 31, 2014 ($'000) |
2013-2014 Year End Variance from Revised Budget ($'000) |
||
$ | % | ||||
Salaries and Wages | 4,816.0 | 4,445.8 | 4,418.6 | 27.2 | 0.61% |
Benefits | 356.2 | 524.3 | 540.2 | -15.9 | -3.03% |
Other Direct Operating Expenses (ODOE) | 658.2 | 774.0 | 771.8 | 2.2 | 0.28% |
Total Expenses | 5,830.4 | 5,744.1 | 5,730.6 | 13.5 | 0.24% |
Watch for the following eLearning modules and webinars coming soon.
On June 30, 2008, Bill 107 came into force. This major reform of Ontario’s human rights system included:
The Tranchemontagne case led to two important clarifications of the Human Rights Code – what is covered under the ground of disability, and the primacy of the Code.
Two men, who had severe alcohol addictions, applied for disability benefits under the Ontario Disability Support Program. They were denied benefits because the legislation behind ODSP said that a person is not eligible for income support as a disabled person if their only substantial impairment is alcohol or other substance dependence or addiction. But we felt that the Code recognized alcohol and drug addiction as a disability.
When the men raised the human rights issue at the Social Benefits Tribunal, the Tribunal refused to consider these aspects of the case, stating it was not empowered to consider human rights.
We intervened in this case at the Supreme Court of Canada, and the Court supported our position. In its April 2006 ruling, it held that the Human Rights Code is fundamental law. Any tribunal that has the power to consider questions of law also has the power, as a matter of ordinary statutory interpretation, to determine whether another statute is inconsistent with the Code. In the case of an inconsistency, the Code prevails unless the other statute expressly states that it overrides the Code. The Social Benefits Tribunal could, therefore, determine if the effective exclusion of alcoholism from disability coverage was contrary to the Code. If that Tribunal makes such a finding then the remedy would be to ignore that restrictive provision in the ODSPA and to grant the disability benefit.
In a later decision, the Supreme Court also found that extreme alcoholism is a disability under the Code.
The November 2012 Supreme Court of Canada decision in the case of Jeffrey Moore helped reinforce the need to broadly define the scope of social areas in human rights codes across Canada, and to reinforce the duty to accommodate in education.
Jeffrey had a severe learning disability. At first, the North Vancouver District School Board accommodated his needs, but when faced with funding cuts, they eliminated the program Jeffrey relied on Jeffrey moved to a private school, where his parents had to pay for his supports.
His father complained to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, which found that he had been discriminated against because of his disability, by not receiving a service that was generally available to the public. The Tribunal found that there was individual discrimination and also systemic discrimination against students with severe learning disabilities.
Both the B.C. Supreme Court and the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned the Tribunal’s decision, saying that to establish discrimination, Jeffrey’s treatment should be compared to that of other students with disabilities. This does not reflect the human rights approach of looking for inclusion and comparisons with the entire student body, not just students who are also disadvantaged.
We intervened, along with the Alberta Human Rights Commission, when the case was appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada. We were concerned that the B.C. court decisions were basically saying that since the “special education service” Jeffrey needed didn’t already exist, there was no way to accommodate him, and that since he wasn’t worse off than other people with disabilities, there was no discrimination. We also argued that “special education” is an accommodation aimed at allowing students with disabilities equal access to education, in support of the human rights goals of equity, inclusion and universal design.
The Supreme Court agreed with our position, overturned the earlier rulings, and upheld the original Tribunal decision that discrimination had happened. The Court ruled that “special education” is an accommodation that is a part of providing all young people with equal participation in education. It also held that comparing one group against another is inconsistent with the type of accommodation/discrimination analysis that we think should be used when human rights issues are raised.
The decision also emphasized that “no money is no defence.” In other words, when facing fiscal tightening, services and organizations still have to make accommodation the price of inclusion.