PC CAUCUS SHEDS LIGHT ON HUMAN RIGHTS TRIBUNAL PDF Print E-mail
Sunday, 08 February 2009 19:00

(Queen’s Park) - The Chair of the Human Rights Tribunal, and various debutants including Maclean’s writer Mark Steyn and accessibility advocate David Lepofsky, were called by the Standing Committee on Government Agencies, to review the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. Vice-Chair Lisa MacLeod led the Opposition questioning by asking Michael Gottheil, Chair of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, “if human rights trumps free speech or if free speech trumps human rights?” To MacLeod’s dissatisfaction Gottheil’s response was a feeble “neither trumps either.”

Meanwhile, Attorney General Critic Christine Elliott was “concerned by the fact that only 40% of complainants are represented by legal counsel, despite the fact that the Attorney General, when the Bill 107 was introduced in the legislature, promised that anyone who needed a lawyer would have a lawyer.”

The Tribunal recently went through a significant transformation: On June 30, 2008, the Human Rights Code Amendment Act came into force and the Tribunal was now responsible for receiving and resolving all claims of discrimination brought under the Human Rights Code.  Last summer, the Liberal Government stacked the controversial Human Rights Tribunal in the dead of summer by appointing new members with only Conservative MPPs offering dissension.

The PC Members of the Government Agency Committee will be calling on the return of the Chair of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, while also bringing in Raj Anand, Chair of the Human Rights Legal Support Centre, and Ontario Human Rights Commissioner Barbara Hall to testify at committee.

For Immediate Release                                                            

February 9th, 2008

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Key Quotes

Mr. Michael Gottheil, Chair of the Human Rights Tribunal:

“I guess the short answer is neither trumps either, because really, depending on the context in which you’re speaking, freedom of speech is a human right. There’s a variety of human rights that are set up in the Charter of Rights.”

Mr. Mark Steyn:

“The present Ontario human rights regime is incompatible with a free society. It is useless on real human rights issues that we face today and, in the course of such pseudo human rights.”“The tribunal, I think, needs to be brought within the codes and conventions of this country’s legal system. At the moment, it upends them. The burden of proof ought to be on the accuser. The accuser should not be allowed unlimited funds to frivolously torment people for no reason, beggaring them for something that serves no public purpose.”“It’s not possible in a legal sense to mount a defence to the accusation that you’ve offended somebody, which is why the human right to not to be offended should not exist in free societies. That’s the first and most basic thing that this system fails in.”

Mr. David Lepofsky, Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance:

I regret that what we are here to do today is to tell you what we were trying to warn you of three years ago, and which unfortunately appears to be coming true, as a result of the government’s changes to the Human Rights Tribunal and the related agencies it works with.