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Empower U: Learn to Access Your Disability Rights Training on Canadian Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and its Optional Protocol (OP) training aims to increase awareness of how to address discrimination using more familiar Canadian human rights laws such as Human Rights Codes and the newer international Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This is training for persons with disabilities by persons with disabilities. The training is part of a project funded by Employment and Social Development Canada and implemented by the Council of Canadians with Disabilities (CCD) in collaboration with Canadian Multicultural Disability Centre Inc. (CMDCI), Citizens With Disabilities – Ontario (CWDO), Manitoba League of Persons with Disabilities (MLPD) and National Educational Association of Disabled Students (NEADS). Read more.
International Day of Human Rights
Today, December 10th, 2023, CCD commemorates International Human Rights Day. The theme for this year is Freedom, Equality and Justice for All.
This is the 75th anniversary of the International Declaration of Human Rights, which Eleanor Roosevelt referred to as the Magna Carta of all people. We recognize the role that John Humphrey, a Canadian with a disability, played in the development of the Declaration. Along with others, Mr. Humphrey prepared the first draft of the Declaration.
As the United Nations explains, the Declaration has been the foundation for an expanding system of human rights protection, including the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
While we celebrate the achievements that have been made to date by applying human rights law to the barriers experienced by people with disabilities in Canada, we recognize that many Canadians with disabilities continue to experience discrimination. Thus, in addition to celebrating we must also on this important anniversary prepare ourselves to address continuing and new emerging barriers through the use of human rights law.
At the conclusion of the Disability and Work conference which took place in Ottawa at the end of November, a challenge was made to participants to read the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, so that they could be more aware of the tools that we have at hand to fight discrimination. Today, we make this same challenge to everyone in our community on this important day. ~ Heather Walkus, CCD Chairperson
Some members of the CCD team at the Supreme Court of Canada on April 25, 2018 to intervene in S.A. v. Metro Vancouver Housing Corporation. (L. to R. Bob Brown, CCD Human Rights Committee member, Dianne Wintermute, legal counsel (ARCH), Dahlia James, a second year JD candidate at U. of Ottawa and Prof. Ravi Malhotra’s Research Assistant and Luke Reid, legal counsel (ARCH) , and Prof. Ravi Malhotra, a member of the Human Rights Committee, Prof. Anne Levesque, Chair of the Human Rights Committee, and Erin Carr, a second year JD candidate.
The Latimer Case
The Latimer case directly concerned the rights of persons with disabilities. Mr. Latimer's view was that a parent has the right to kill a child with a disability if that parent decides the child's quality of life no longer warrants its continuation. CCD explained to the court and to the public how that view threatens the lives of people with disabilities and is deeply offensive to fundamental constitutional values. Learn more.