Speaking out on human rights : debating Canada's human rights system / Pearl Eliadis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Eliadis, F. Pearl, 1959- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human rights--Canada.

Human rights.

Canada.

Canadian Human Rights Commission.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 429 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2014]

Summary:

Canadians see themselves as champions of human rights in the international community. Closer to home, however, the human lights system in Canada - particularly its public institutions such as commissions and tribunals - has been the object of sustained debate and criticism, based largely on widespread myths about how it works. In Speaking Out on Human Eights, Pearl Eliadis explodes these myths, analyzing the pervasive distortions and errors on which they depend. Canada's human rights system, a unique legal tradition operating within a powerful modern constitution, is a fundamental mechanism for ensuring the practical application of our national commitment to tolerance and inclusion. Drawing on extensive original research as well as in-depth interviews with Canada's leading human rights experts, Eliadis details the evolution of commissions and tribunals as vehicles of public policy and considers their mandate to mediate rights conflicts in contested areas such as hate speech, religious freedoms, and sexuality. Eliadis provides a frank assessment of how Canada's human rights system functions and argues that misplaced critiques have prevented urgent and necessary discussions about the reforms that are needed to improve fairness and equality before the law and to ensure institutional independence, impartiality, and competence. Speaking Out on Human Rights shows how our human rights system plays an important role in the rights revolution both in Canada and internationally and offers promising avenues for its future development. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Introducing Human Rights Systems 25

2 Human Rights Systems Then and Now 63

3 Do We Still Need Them? 109

4 Are They Fair? 157

5 Signal Cases, Rights Conflicts, and Building a Human Rights Culture 203

6 Ideas for the Way Forward 240.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 317-393) and index.

Other Format:

Eliadis, F. Pearl, author. Speaking out on human rights.

ISBN:

9780773543041

077354304X

9780773543058

0773543058

OCLC:

865225442