Search results for “site/human rights”

  • Stack of papers with a magnifying glass resting on them

    Time to end information hide-and-seek games: Public deserves more prompt government disclosure of basic data

    No one should be told to file a Freedom of Information request simply to learn who works for them. Government must give members of the public access to up-to-date and useful information on who is there to serve them and quit obfuscating and abusing access to information laws, Ben Parfitt…

  • Ontario vs. Toronto: Democracy on trial

    Not even three full months into his reign as Ontario premier, the battle lines between Doug Ford and the City of Toronto have been drawn and democracy is on trial.Premier Ford threw Toronto’s October 22nd municipal election campaign into chaos this summer by arbitrarily cutting the number of seats almost…

  • Consumer rights and responsibilities in the age of climate change and big data

    I’ll be attending the Consumers 150 conference in Ottawa this week, which is co-organized by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, Option consommateurs, Consumers Council of Canada and Union des consommateurs. The event is billed as a chance to analyze today’s high-profile consumer rights issues—national pharmacare, the sharing economy, climate change…

  • Preventing discrimination before it occurs

    The human rights process starts with the filing of a complaint of discrimination. In BC, the complaint is filed with the BC Human Rights Tribunal. Filing an effective complaint requires a good deal of time and effort. It can be hard to devote that time and effort if, for example,…

  • The Rise and Fall of Economic and Social Rights

    What’s Next? Download 110.18 KB8 pages He has committed his life to the advancement of human rights. He’s watched Canada move from a “sharing and caring” society to the “new barbarism.”  Now Ed Broadbent comes out swinging.  In this article based on his address to the Congress of the Canadian…

  • Labour Matters
    Trade Union Research Collective

    Fast Facts: How Unions Protect Our Human Rights

    Unions are usually thought of as being about higher wages.  It’s true. Unions do produce higher wages for their members (and often, as a result of knock-on effects, for other workers as well).  As of April 2011, for example, the 200,000 Manitoba workers covered by collective agreements earned an average hourly…

  • From disenfranchised to revitalized: Ten proposals to set our forests and BC’s rural communities on a new course

    Fort Nelson and Merritt lie at two geographical extremes, the former perched in the northeast corner near some of British Columbia’s biggest natural gas plays, the latter located deep in the province’s southwest, near rolling dry hills that are home to BC’s biggest ranches. It takes nearly 15 hours by…

  • Legislated Paid Sick Leave – A Historic Moment for Worker Rights

    The BC government will implement the right for all employees to have a minimum number of employer-paid sick days on January 1, 2022. BC will become just the third province in Canada to do so—and has an opportunity to make history by bringing in the strongest, most well-designed program in the country. Last…

  • A Living Wage As a Human Right

    Download 432.43 KB18 pages In Canada, many workers do not earn a living wage because of discrimination. Women work­ers and those who are racialized, immigrant, Aboriginal, living with disabil­ities or similarly disadvantaged are all segregated into low wage job ghettoes—their work systemically devalued. Governments and employers need to deliver more…

  • BC Hydro’s Integrated Resource Plan and The Case Against Site C

    It could have been me taking time off during the short Vancouver summer, or perhaps that the news release got dropped on the Friday before the August long weekend, but I totally missed the release of BC Hydro’s Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). It is an important document for the province,…

  • The Monitor, May/June 2019

    The Surveillance Economy Download 4.51 MB Google (Alphabet), Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon. They are among the world’s most valuable and most trusted companies, but increasingly the most scrutinized for their data-hoarding practices, monopolist tendencies, poor treatment of workers and willingness to bend or even break privacy laws in the pursuit…

  • BC NDP-Green agreement commits to Indigenous consent

    In their power-sharing agreement, the BC New Democrat and Green parties commit to support the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2014 Tsilhqot’in decision, calling the documents “foundational” to their shared policy agenda. Central to both is Indigenous peoples’ right to free,…