Ottawa, Ontario – Canadian Human Rights Commission
On International Human Rights Day, Charlotte-Anne Malischewski, the Interim Chief Commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, issues the following statement:
Today, we mark International Human Rights Day and the anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 1 of the Declaration proclaims that all people are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Yet for many, this promise remains unfulfilled. To truly live up to those words, Canada must do a better job of ensuring that everyone across the country can live with dignity.
For too many people in Canada, systemic inequality results in inadequate access to services, which means that their fundamental rights continue to be denied and their dignity diminished. Recent data from Food Banks Canada shows that rapid inflation, housing costs and insufficient social supports are driving new levels of poverty and food insecurity. Food bank lines are at all-time high, with more than two million visits recorded in March 2024. And recent reports show that nearly one in five people in Canada who are having to turn to food banks have jobs.
This serves to illustrate what many have known since the impacts of the pandemic: the circle of vulnerability is widening in Canada. The housing and homelessness crisis is now overlapping with a crisis of basic human rights for Canadian families.
Tragically, some people with disabilities are at times resorting to medical assistance in dying because the basic supports and services they need do not exist. Denied the means to live with dignity, they are choosing to die with dignity.
And dignity is what this is all about.
Many individuals face barriers and discrimination due to their social and economic realities—their social condition. While every provincial and territorial human rights code in Canada has some form of protection against this form of discrimination, a concerning gap exists at the federal level. There is no way to ensure that their socioeconomic rights are enforced by federal law. As inequality deepens and more people find themselves in precarious situations, it is time for a renewed conversation about better protections for people’s socioeconomic rights.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission’s founding legislation, the Canadian Human Rights Act, came into force just one year after Canada’s 1976 ratification of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. And yet, Canada’s federal human rights law failed to include protections for people living in poverty and for people who experience discrimination because of their social condition.
Despite almost 50 years having passed, Canada has an obligation to look at poverty as a human rights issue. Poverty is frequently the result of other forms of inequality, such as those based on race or disability. And when our most basic rights are not met, our other rights have little meaning.
Adding the ground of social condition to the Canadian Human Rights Act is about recognizing that human rights are interconnected. Access to housing, health care, and education are not isolated issues; they are essential elements of a life lived with dignity, autonomy, and free from discrimination. We also need comprehensive solutions, like proactive measures and concrete actions to improve the housing crisis and strengthened social supports and community-based structures to help people live with dignity in their day to day lives.
Human rights, living free from discrimination, and fundamental socioeconomic rights go hand in hand.
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