What human rights are ignored in Canada?

Answer 1

Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of association, and property rights, just to name a few.

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While Canada is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, Human Rights are pretty much protected here. We do have Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of association, and property rights. You aren't jailed for speaking your mind or believing any particular faith. You can own property (which is not a human right by the way). Canada is protected by its Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Plus we have Toques and Poutine, eh.

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Compared to most countries Canada does not ignore any Human Rights but we do have many on going Human Rights issues, hence the various answers.

Freedom of Speech is one. We do have significant censorship but we also have many language laws and they create Human Right problems. The Federal Government, Canada, is Bilingual. A compromise was taken by the British in the 1700's to address issues with what was at the time a large population of French, large enough to be a majority in some areas of North America controlled by the British. That compromise allowed the use of the French language, giving it official status, and eventually making Canada officially bilingual.

Today French speaking people are a small minority outside of the area that was the original colony called Canada. In many areas and Nations of Canada they are less than 5% of the population. That does not change the language laws which result in jobs, particularly federal jobs, being reserved for people from that small minority of residents. It also results in business and governments having to spend money on everything from French Language services to French signs and labeling.

If you are French you would of course see nothing wrong with such discrimination but if you are in an area where the top spoken languages are English, Chinese, Punjabi, German and Tagalog with French not even in the top three, you will reasonably have some questions. Canadians should be concerned about the special status given to one tiny minority over other much larger minorities. It seems, at least in some cases, to be a clear violation of many articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Which leads to Canada's handling of groups called Aboriginals. The British did not see these groups as British and so entered into Treaties with them. Canada inherited these race based treaties and has failed to end the treaties, or bring these racial defined groups into Canada as equal citizens.

Aboriginals resist such changes because the treaties give them special status, special access to resources, special access to government money and forms of revenue. Many call themselves, accurately I think, as Canadians Plus. They can have all the rights of a Canadian plus extra rights via treaties.

The problem with the treaties and the special status is that it is based on race. A person from a different race cannot achieve that special status, regardless of how hard they work or how long their family lives in the land and it is the government that makes that so.

The other problem is the Aboriginals themselves feel that there are human rights being violated by Canada and feel very strongly that race based policies are a requirement when dealing with Aboriginal issues.

There are also issues around freedom of conscience, freedom of association, freedom of religion and property rights. Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes property rights and most Canadians wanted that right to be affirmed in our Constitution.

But the Canadian Constitution is not one created by the people. The government of the day did not feel particularly bound by the wishes of the people so left property rights out and race based rights in. The government has since made changes to that Constitution practically impossible so it cannot be updated as Canada and the Nations that make up the Confederation change.

With all that said Canada stands head and shoulders above most counties when it comes to human rights.