A new labour department mandate requiring federally regulated private employers to provide workers with free sanitary napkins would cost about $11.6 million a year, by official estimate. Cabinet called it a basic right for Canadian women: “Government intervention is necessary.”
When political fixer Jean Pelletier was fired as chair of VIA Rail in 2004 the National Post reported with a straight face he was denied “due process.” Pelletier was cast not as a target of Liberal score-settling but a victim denied his fundamental right to a porkbarrel appointment.
Sociologist Dominique Clément would call this a case of “rights inflation.” Like real inflation, it cheapens the currency. Pat references to human rights now run the gamut from Tibetan genocide to accessible washrooms. Forgotten are the nuances of the English language that draw proportional distinction between atrocities and grievances.
“There is a danger in framing any and all grievances as rights violations,” writes Professor Clément of the University of Alberta’s Department of Sociology. “This raises questions about the widespread use of rights talk. These days, almost every grievance is framed as a human right.”
Debating Rights Inflation In Canada is a box of fireworks that would liven any book club. Clément notes that compared to 1867, when Canadians’ understanding of common rights was limited to ownership of land and Catholic schooling, postwar years have seen an explosion of rights dialogue. Canadians claim a right to privacy, housing and immigration, a right to work or die or obtain a safe supply of heroin or make free photocopies under the Copyright Act.
In 2013 the Supreme Court in what Clément calls a “stunning decision” ruled prostitution laws breached the Charter Of Rights. “It is hard to imagine a more striking example of rights inflation than a court overturning criminal laws that have existed since before Confederation,” writes Clément.
Debating Rights Inflation In Canada is scholarly, never snide and always provocative. “Rights inflation challenges the boundaries of our rights culture through rights claims that offer a new understanding of rights,” says Clément. “Is text messaging, for instance, free speech?”
Clément also questions the application of enforcement. If rights dialogue draws no distinction between grievance and atrocity then it draws no distinction between Mao and, say, Ted’s Tap & Grill of Burlington, Ont., fined $10,000 for kicking out a cannabis-smoking customer. “The Ontario Human Rights Commission determined he was guilty of discrimination on the basis of disability because the marijuana was medicinal,” writes Clément.
The book is fair-minded with opposing views. Rights lawyer Pearl Eliadis of Montréal complains Clément’s analysis is “troubling”: “Is it true that human rights no longer deal with real rights at all, but rather with watered-down or trivial versions of ‘real’ rights? The most striking examples of these critiques have been directed at human rights commissions, whose officials are sometimes cast as officious bureaucrats trolling for fringe claims from ‘surgery-seeking transsexuals’, say, or ‘unhygienic foreigners’ who won’t wash their hands, thus creating what critics see as a self-perpetuating cottage industry of dubious claims,” writes Eliadis.
“But this argument depends on a fallacy,” Eliadis continues. “Confusing where the right is being claimed with the right itself can indeed make cases bizarre. For example, the sit-ins and protests at lunch counters by African Canadians in southern Ontario in the 1960s could be reframed as fighting for the ‘right to have lunch.’ The famous case of Viola Desmond, a black woman who was thrown out of a Nova Scotia theatre in the 1940s, could be recast as a struggle for ‘the right to go to the movies.’”
Maybe. But Jean Pelletier was no Viola Desmond. And whatever is preventing Canada from achieving the workers’ paradise of equality, fraternity and liberty, it’s not Ted’s Tap & Grill.
By Holly Doan
Debating Rights Inflation in Canada: A Sociology of Human Rights, by Dominique Clément; Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 200 pages; ISBN 9781-77112-2443; $24.99
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland grossly inflated estimates of the Freedom Convoy impact on the economy, internal documents show. Freeland cited figures described in one Department of Transport memo as an “extreme case” that did not reflect actual data: “I have many figures in my head.”
The Freedom Convoy was the culmination of a “mass protest movement” against pandemic mandates and lockdowns, a convoy inquiry lawyer said yesterday. Counsel at the Public Order Emergency Commission counted more than 140 major demonstrations and legal challenges nationwide leading to the truckers’ blockade outside Parliament: “Just stick to the facts, the raw facts.”
Paul Rouleau, the Liberal-appointed judge heading the Freedom Convoy inquiry, yesterday promised Canadians a “fair and meaningful” investigation stripped of any partisanship. “Be prepared to work hard,” he told lawyers at the Public Order Emergency Commission: “The public has a right to know what happened.”
Federal debt charges have surpassed the $26.5 billion national defence budget, the Parliamentary Budget Office confirmed yesterday. Debt charges were $31.2 billion and rising, it said: “Public debt charges are projected to more than double.”
Air Canada couldn’t count to 10, a British Columbia small claims court judge has ruled. The Civil Resolution Tribunal ordered the airline to pay $775 in damages and costs for garbling its arithmetic at the expense of a North Vancouver couple: ‘Explain how to count 10.’
The RCMP in a briefing to deputy ministers the very day cabinet invoked the Emergencies Act falsely claimed Freedom Convoy protesters had weapons outside Parliament. They didn’t. A police memo attributed the rumour to “intelligence information.”
RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki when testifying at parliamentary hearings must appear “self-confident and firm,” speak slowly and beware of trickery by MPs. The advice is detailed in a five-page tip sheet written by the Mounties’ government affairs unit: “Smile and pause.”
The Commons immigration committee yesterday by a 6 to 5 vote rejected a review of records showing now-Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino backdated documents to mislead a federal judge. Liberal and Bloc Québécois MPs called the incident a simple mistake: “There’s something fishy that has happened here, something strange.”
The onus is on cabinet to justify extraordinary police powers used against the Freedom Convoy, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association said yesterday. Civil rights lawyers are participating in a judicial inquiry that opens today at 9:30 am Eastern: “The burden is on them, not the other way around.”
Cabinet yesterday enacted regulations to speed the deportation of foreigners involved in organized crime. The Canada Border Services Agency complained under old rules it had to hear and re-hear evidence against immigrants already convicted of serious offences before deporting them: “I don’t quite understand why we would tolerate this.”
A CBC News claim that falsely suggested Russia was behind Freedom Convoy protests should have “been caught before broadcast,” says the network’s ombudsman. The claim by CBC announcer Nil Koksal was unattributed and made without evidence: “I am disappointed it took others to point out to CBC the question was ‘off.'”
Minister Marco Mendicino’s office yesterday claimed he had no involvement in backdating documents to mislead a federal judge. Internal emails show documents were sent to Mendicino’s office. Staff did not explain the discrepancy: “We’re just waiting for MINO’s approval.”
Internal Department of Public Safety reports confirm there was no evidence of violence by Freedom Convoy supporters outside Parliament. One report issued the very day cabinet invoked the Emergencies Act said the protest was small, peaceful and had little impact on federal operations: “Disruption to government activities is so far minor.”
