AODA Alliance
SUMMARY
There has been even more media coverage of the November 9, 2006 Queen’s Park
news conference, where the newest phase was unveiled in the campaign against the McGuinty Government’s plans to weaken the under-funded Human Rights Commission.
On Saturday, November 11, 2006, the Toronto Globe and Mail ran a column by the Globe’s Queen’s Park columnist Murray Campbell. (See article below) AODA
Alliance Human Rights Reform Representative David Lepofsky sent the Globe a
letter to the editor seeking to address certain matters in that article. We don’t know if the Globe will print that letter. (See letter below) Also, the November 13, 2006 Toronto Star included an article by the Star’s Queen’s Park columnist Ian Urquhart. (See article below) Additionally, the Guelph Mercury included an article on November 10, 2006 which is based on the same Canadian press report we described in our last Update. (not repeated below)
Key points to note:
- According to the Globe column, Attorney General Michael Bryant plans to release dozens of amendments to the controversial Bill 107 just before the hearings resume. For months, we have urged the Government to release its proposed amendments before commencement of public hearings, so that presenters at the hearings could comment on them. The McGuinty Government announced back last June that it intended to bring amendments forward.
- Both the Star and The Globe describe the McGuinty Government as still uncertain about whether to go the whole distance with this bill given the controversy around it.
- Taking this media coverage together with the coverage on November 10, 2006, the McGuinty Government is still sloughing off the call for increased funding to the under-funded human rights enforcement system. Whether the Government implements Bill 107’s model for privatizing human rights enforcement, or adopts our proposals for strengthening the public enforcement system, the system desperately needs substantial new funding. Without that new funding, any “reform” won’t succeed.
- The Globe suggests or implies that there is still some uncertainty on whether the Legislature’s Standing Committee on Justice Policy will grant a time slot to every presenter who requests a hearing. We have urged for months that everyone who wants to present be given a time slot to present. You have until December 15, 2006 to sign up. So far the Standing Committee’s staff has been booking time slots in November and December. However, the Globe suggests that it remains to be decided whether the Government will let the hearings go on as long as needed to hear from all wishing to be heard.
- All attention will be on the Standing Committee as it resumes hearings this Wednesday, November 15, and continues on Thursday. Hearings are open to
the public. We encourage all to attend.
The Globe and Mail
Column, Saturday, November 11, 2006, p. A9
Queen’s Park
Reforming human-rights system turns into a Catch-22 for McGuinty
Murray Campbell
It’s the best sort of parliamentary gamesmanship, the kind that smokes out a
government to see how brave and committed it is.
Next Wednesday morning, one of the first orders of business at the Ontario
Legislature’s justice policy committee will be to consider a subcommittee’s
Recommendation to extend the number of days on which controversial legislation to overhaul the provincial human-rights system will be examined. It doesn’t sound like a big deal but the people in Premier Dalton McGuinty’s office and on the Liberal campaign team will be watching very, very closely.
The legislation, Bill 107, to reform the overburdened 44-year-old human-rights
apparatus has proved unexpectedly contentious since it was introduced in April.
The central change, to make an existing tribunal the place to hear individual
complaints rather than the Human Rights Commission, is popular with a large
number of activists, including a vast array of legal-aid clinics that deal with
the less affluent.
At the same time, however, there are an abundant number of critics who believe
the McGuinty government has got the wrong end of the stick. They argue that
major structural reform isn’t needed, just a few million dollars more to erase
the commission’s huge backlog of complaints.
The two sides duked it out this summer during committee hearings in Ottawa,
Thunder Bay and London. The critics believe their views dominated the discussion
at those meetings and that their allies are legion among the 180 people already
on the list to testify in Toronto.
The problem was that there were only two days of Queen’s Park hearings
scheduled, which is why a New Democrat and a Progressive Conservative on the
three-member
subcommittee teamed up to push through a motion asking for up to 18 days more
hearings. “It’s such an important issue that you need to give people every
opportunity to say what they want to say,” said Conservative MPP Christine
Elliott.
The committee’s clerk has scheduled hearing dates through December but this
needs to be confirmed by the politicians and, at this point, it’s not known
whether the Premier’s strategists will allow Liberals on the committee to vote
in favour. Their choice is to allow days of stories out of the committee in
which the government is criticized or to face accusations of censorship by
limiting the hearings.
Liberal strategists planning for the October, 2007, election are, of course,
eager to avoid grief of any sort so it’s a tough spot for them. They are also
keen to avoid aggravating left-leaning voters because they know they can no
longer count on their support without the presence on the ballot of bogeymen
Mike Harris and Ernie Eves.
The trouble is that there are good lefties among both the critics and supporters
of Bill 107. The bill is supported by 55 legal-aid clinics, a couple of former
commission chairs and secular saint June Callwood. The opposition is led by
David Lepofsky, a blind Crown counsel who battled the Toronto Transit Commission for a decade to get subway stops announced. His coalition, which includes legal-aid clinics serving the black and Asian communities, has just launched a series of ads in six languages that warn “don’t let Dalton McGuinty take away your rights.”
It’s no wonder that Attorney-General Michael Bryant is feeling a bit beleaguered
these days. He plans to introduce “dozens” of amendments at Wednesday’s committee hearing but he has no way of knowing if they will mollify critics. He says he has the support of the Premier’s office in pushing ahead with reform but one of his staffers conceded this week that the message from Mr. McGuinty’s office is “you’re alive but barely.”
Mr. Bryant argues that people wait up to five years now to get a hearing before
the commission and that isn’t going to change just by adding the $6-million that
Mr. Lepofsky has suggested is needed. The Attorney-General argues the system
will be more efficient if the commission works on broader, systemic complaints and the tribunal handles individual cases.
Seven months into his duel with the critics, Mr. Bryant has become a bit wiser.
“This is the first time that the province has attempted to reform the human-rights system in more than 40 years,” he said. “Now I know why.”
From: David Lepofsky
By email to: letters@globeandmail.com
Date: November 11, 2006
Dear Editors,
May I set the record straight on two key points in the otherwise informative
column: “Reforming human-rights system turns into a Catch-22 for McGuinty” (11
11 06)
It correctly says two sharply divided camps disagree on how to fix our
under-funded, backlogged human rights enforcement system. However it leaves the
inaccurate impression that the many of us on the side opposing McGuinty’s bill
only seek more public funding. In fact, in addition to desperately-needed
funding, we also say that the human rights system needs an overhaul. We released a Blueprint for this with 24 detailed proposals. (www.www.aodaalliance.org/category/ontario-human-rights/)
McGuinty’s bill wrongly privatizes human rights enforcement, making things
worse not better. In contrast, our Blueprint would strengthen Ontario’s public
human rights enforcement system.
The article also quotes Ontario’s Attorney General claiming the human rights
system hasn’t changed in 44 years. In fact, the Human Rights Code was totally
re-written in 1982(I actively advocated for reforms back then). Several
additional changes were made over those 44 years .
Changes now needed are not McGuinty’s retrogressive ones .
David Lepofsky CM
Human Rights Reform Representative, Accessibility for Ontarians with
Disabilities Act Alliance
Toronto
The Toronto Star November 13, 2006
Controversial bill back on agenda
Ian Urquhart
The provincial government’s plan to overhaul the Ontario Human Rights
Commission, derailed over the summer by an aggressive lobbying campaign, is back on track, although maybe not for long.
Public hearings on the plan, suspended after three days in the summer, are
resuming at Queen’s Park this week.
That could mean that the plan, embodied in Bill 107, will be back in the
Legislature before Christmas for third and final reading.
But there are no guarantees of that as the political situation surrounding
the bill remains very fluid.
First some background:
Bill 107, introduced last spring by Attorney General Michael Bryant, would give
victims of discrimination “direct access” to the human rights tribunal for
adjudication rather than make them first go through the commission, a process
that can take years due to a huge backlog. The commission would then focus on
systemic discrimination rather than individual cases.
Reaction to the bill was swift and furious from various groups representing the
disabled community and visible minorities. They saw “direct access” as a
euphemism for “privatization,” and they said most complainants cannot afford to
hire their own lawyers to bring their cases to the tribunal – a job now handled
by commission staff.
These disabled and minority groups were not mollified by Bryant’s promises to
provide public funding to allow complainants to be represented by counsel.
The groups got the ear of Premier Dalton McGuinty’s office, which is risk averse
after the debacle of the by-election in Parkdale-High Park, Gerard Kennedy’s old
seat.
In that by-election, various interest groups on other issues (environment,
education, property taxes) ganged up to help defeat the Liberal candidate.
Insiders say that the people around McGuinty don’t want to pursue any more
initiatives that will have protesting picketers dogging the premier in the next
election. So by October, with a provincial election less than a year away, Bill
107 appeared to be headed for a dusty shelf.
But then a counter-lobby began agitating in favour of the legislation. The likes
of June Callwood, Claire l’Heureux-Dube (a former Supreme Court judge),
Catherine Frazee (a former head of the human rights commission), law deans and professors, a coalition of several dozen legal clinics, and the Ontario Bar
Association began writing letters to the premier or issuing press releases in
support of Bill 107.
The Liberals were caught in a quandary. One side saw Bill 107 as reactionary and
bad; the other saw it as progressive and good. No matter what the government
did, one side or the other was going to be unhappy.
To try to find a compromise, a private debate was staged at Queen’s Park
between Michael Gottheil, chair of the human rights tribunal and a keen advocate of Bill 107, and David Lepofsky, a leading spokesperson for the disabled
community and vociferous opponent of the bill. The audience was a representative from the premier’s office. I am told that Gottheil won the debate. For the record, Lepofsky says it was a “conversation” rather than a debate.
At any rate, soon afterward Bill 107 was back on the rails and the hearings were
scheduled. Whether the bill stays on track remains to be seen. The anti-bill
lobby shifted gears last week and announced a TV ad campaign, in six different
languages. “If you believe in human rights, listen up,” says the voice-over in the ad, which will be aired exclusively on OMNI television. “The McGuinty government says it’s trying to fix our human rights system, but its plans will make things worse … Don’t let Dalton McGuinty take away your rights. Call the premier’s office today and say NO to Bill 107.”
At a press conference to unveil the ads, there were suggestions that the
Liberals would live to regret it if they don’t back down on the bill.
“We want all parties to know we’ll raise this issue in the next general
election,” said Margaret Parsons of the African Canadian Legal Clinic.
The anti-bill groups also released their own “blueprint” for reform of the
human rights commission, which was immediately attacked by the other side as
contradictory and redundant.
This battle will be fought in public at the committee hearings Wednesday and
Thursday at Queen’s Park, where representatives of both sides are scheduled to
testify. Among the more interested observers will be the office of the premier.
Ian Urquhart’s provincial affairs column appears Monday, Wednesday and
Saturday.
iurquha@thestar.ca.