This is not the Canada I once knew

[Oscar]

This is not the Canada I once knew

[ http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/views-e ... -once-knew ]

By Alex Neve | July 16, 2015

Those were the words of a British member of the UN Human Rights Committee who was taking part this week in the committee's first review of Canada's human rights record in 10 years.

Sir Nigel Rodley, a law professor and chair of the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex, was referring to the deteriorating space for human rights advocacy, protest and dissent in Canada. He noted it was almost unbelievable that the UN committee felt compelled to raise these sorts of concerns with Canada. Sir Nigel highlighted research by the Voices coalition, which pointed to astonishing levels of fear and intimidation felt by Canadian activists and civil society groups, and referred to the disquiet expressed by the UN's leading expert on the freedoms of assembly and association. He dismissed the Canadian government's initial response to questions about the crackdown as "thin."

It was a powerful moment that came near the end of six hours of back-and-forth, over two days, between committee members (drawn from countries around the world) and a sizable Canadian delegation from various federal departments and the province of Quebec. And it captured wider concerns about the range of troubling issues explored in the review.

Canada's human rights record has been on display, and the range of shortcomings and violations that have been probed has been sobering.

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By the end of the review it was difficult to think of a serious social issue, with clear implications for human rights, that had not come up. Homelessness and the right to life. Intelligence sharing and torture. Pay equity and women's equality rights. Solitary confinement and high incarceration rates of Aboriginal people. Detention of immigrants with mental-health problems.

The committee report is due by month's end, and then comes the true test for Canada. Will there be a good-faith commitment to take up the UN's advice to tackle entrenched problems and head off new ones? Will the Canadian government show determination to protect human rights at home and be a leader abroad? Will there be action?

Or can we look forward to another such performance a decade from now? And another lament of "not the Canada I once knew." Surely not.

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Alex Neve is the Secretary-General of Amnesty International Canada. This article originally appeared in The Globe and Mail.