January 2024 – Looking in Ontario contributed to a report that is now going to the Federal, Provincial and Territorial Senior Officials Committee Responsible for Human Rights (SOHCR). They will be looking at UN recommendations. The issue of missing fathers on adoptee original birth registrations and the extension of access to adoption information to next of kin of deceased adoptees/parents has been included in the report. https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/about-human-rights.html#a5
Other communications – we have received a response in Messenger from the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs (of Ontario) Facebook page who says “we have shared your suggestions with the appropriate divisions within the Ministry.” At least it was a positive human response. Now they need to take action.
December 2023 – Looking in Ontario is now in talks with the Canadian Federal government, along with a number of other NGO’s, ahead of Canada’s forthcoming response in March 2024 to the UN Human Rights Council with regards to the recommendations made by the member states (countries).
Recording of Canada’s Review by the UN Human Rights Council – Statements by Member States (UN Web cast recording – 44th Session)
Here is the recording of the UN Review for Canada – 10th November 2023
https://media.un.org/en/asset/k14/k14bhl5fi4
How the UN session works – Each member state (country) has one minute to put forward up to 5 recommendations for Canada to consider. This takes about 3 and half hours so that all countries present can be heard.
A 3 country group will now go through all the recommendations and create a report on Canada, taking everything into consideration. The report will be distributed on 14th November.
Here are some of the recommendations that you may find relevant.
One of the recommendations that I asked for was for a Federal commissioner to uphold children’s rights (which would include anything to do with birth registrations) so thank you to the countries who put that one forward, especially Poland. Croatia asked for a monitoring mechanism for children’s rights.
Greece put forward the recommendation asking Canada to strengthen measures aimed at avoiding the removal of children and asking Canada to preserve children’s identities. Thank you Greece – they actually listened to me.
One item mentioned by the Attorney General of Canada Mr. Arif Virani towards the end of the session was the Federal government initiative called the Court Challenges Program. Sadly this is only for federal jurisdictions, not for provincial breaches of human rights in provincial laws. This means that it would be costly to challenge anything at provincial level such as the law forbidding the corrections on the original birth registrations of adoptees.
NOTE re: Canada’s Justice system
When it comes to access to civil justice, affordability and delays, Canada is remarkably low in world rankings according to the World Justice Project. This makes it almost impossible for many to try to go through the provincial court system without the kindness of a pro-bono lawyer (not easy to find one as Looking in Ontario has found). Canada is shamefully low in some areas of justice, given that it is one of the richest countries in the world. It seems that one has to be very rich to access it (not to mention the years that cases seem to take – eg. 12 years for the 60’s Scoop lawsuit).
Here are some of those rankings from the World Justice project.
Canada – Justice Rankings that are low
Civil justice is free of discrimination: 78th out of 142 countries
People can access and afford civil justice: 64th out of 142 countries
Civil justice is not subject to unreasonable delay: 58th out of 142 countries
https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/country/2023/Canada/Civil%20Justice/
Canada’s UN Review 10th November 9 AM Geneva time
The UN Human Rights Council will be reviewing Canada’s Human Rights record in Geneva. They will be broadcasting live.
Here is more info on that. https://www.ohchr.org/en/media-advisories/2023/11/canadas-human-rights-record-be-examined-universal-periodic-review#:~:text=Canada%20is%20one%20of%2014,of%20the%20Human%20Rights%20Council.
Here is more info on Canada’s Review with various documents about it from stake-holders, etc.
https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/upr/ca-index
Looking in Ontario at the UN Geneva 29th August – 1st September 2023
Our visit to the UN went well. This was a pre-session (information gathering) event for Canada’s review at the UN Human Rights Council in November 2023. The Canadian diplomats spoke with me and they have our fact sheets. It looks promising.
Explanation on how the UN Human Rights Council Works
The UN Human Rights Council takes recommendations from member states (countries) for something called a Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
This simply means that the UN looks at a country’s human rights record every 4 and half years. It is Canada’s turn to be looked at in November.
The countries get their information for recommendations from NGO’s (Non-Governmental Organisations). NGO’S gather information and give it to the countries at the Pre-session event. Individuals are not allowed to give recommendations directly to the UN Human Rights Council – only member states can.
Therefore, NGO’S ask other countries to present their recommendations to the UN Human Rights Council. For example, Uruguay decided to present my recommendation to the UN back in 2013.
There have been a number of positive responses from a number of countries, so the outlook is good at the moment. The true test will be in November, when we find out if our recommendations have been put forward by member states who have our factsheets. We will have to wait and see for now.
Factsheets for the 44th Pre-session on Canada (see documents below)
The first fact sheet focuses on the information on adoptee birth registrations and how adoptees are not allowed to correct them.
The second fact sheet focuses on the 60’s Scoop and the Baby Scoop.
Although technically Inuit 60’s Scoop survivors were part of the lawsuit, after 2 years after the settlement was agreed to, only 152 out of 774 Inuit claims had been approved – only 19 percent. Many were unable to claim because their records had been destroyed which meant that many survivors were left out. I don’t have any very recent figures on that now but I wanted the Federal government to understand that they had, at that point in time, had left many in limbo for years, and that the survivors were being punished for the outrageous acts of destruction and vandalism by a government that did not care about the personal records of living people. This affected a high proportion of Inuit 60’s scoop survivors, effectively excluding them from the 60’s Scoop lawsuit as a group at that point – over 80 percent.
Our factsheets can also be found at the UPR Info web site under “Civil Society Materials – Pre-session Statement”
https://www.upr-info.org/en/review/canada
Links to our web site pages
LOOKING IN ONTARIO 