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Not all international agreements are created equal
Powerful international bodies act swiftly and forcefully when nations contravene the terms of trade pacts. So why does nobody notice when countries like Canada violate the international human rights covenants they have signed?
By: Richard Shillington
 You've got your international agreements and your international agreements. There are the important agreements: like the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the pact that created the World Trade Organization (WTO). They are enforceable. Then there are the agreements on human rights, which reflect high ideals and good intent -- but where compliance is optional.
How powerful are the economic agreements? Consider how Canada's joining the WTO and signing NAFTA has restricted our right to set public policy, effectively diminishing Canada's sovereignty.
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Remember how free trade deals were sold to the public? Governments invoked the TINA principle: "there is no alternative". |
Under the NAFTA rules, for instance, this country would have to compensate a US company for banning the gasoline additive MMT. Similarly, the WTO forced us to withdraw our policy on split-run magazines designed to favour Canadian publishers.
Some argue that NAFTA is also incompatible with Medicare. They speculate that if some provinces - Alberta comes to mind - allow private hospitals, then we'll have to allow US firms to compete on equal terms with Canadian firms in our medical system. There are similar gloomy predictions that our international obligations will force Canada to sell water in bulk to other nations.
In all of these cases - MMT, magazines, Medicare and H2O - the government could claim that it has no alternative, that its hands are tied by these darned agreements. This sounds a lot like how we got into the agreements in the first place. Politicians originally sold free trade with the TINA principle - i.e., "there is no alternative."
Now lets turn to the poor cousins of international economic agreements - those related to human rights.
Canada, after consulting with the provinces, signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 27 of this noble document declares that "States Parties recognize the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, spiritual, moral and social development."
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Ontario's lifetime ban for people guilty of welfare fraud will plunge a lot of children into even deeper poverty. How is this policy compatible with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child? |
All children, even those on welfare, have this right. After the recent cuts, though, does anyone think that the support level available to families on welfare is adequate to ensure the "physical, spiritual, moral and social development" of children? Ontario plans a lifetime ban for those found guilty of welfare fraud (which, of course, will affect children). How can throwing children off welfare this way be consistent with the UN Convention?
Another international agreement is The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCRs). Article 11 says that:
"The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions."
It is hard to square this commitment with a number of recent trends. In 1995 the government scrapped the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP) - governing federal transfers to the provinces for health, post-secondary education and welfare - and replaced it with the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST). All the Medicare standards were maintained under the CHST; these gave the feds the financial clout to try and make Alberta behave.
But protections for welfare recipients were dropped. Under the old CAP program, 'workfare,' or Ontario's current plan for a lifetime ban for welfare fraud, would have led to cuts to federal transfers. Under CAP, provinces had to "meet needs" as a condition of cost sharing. Not so under the CHST.
You might have thought that, being a signatory to the ICESCRs - which recognizes the right to an adequate standard of living, including housing - Canada's governments could not just abandon people. If we took these international commitments seriously would we have homeless people? Would we continue to inflict punitive policies on the poor? The UN has slammed the Child Tax Benefit because it excludes the poorest of children, those on welfare.
How do Canada's domestic laws deal with these questions? Section 7 of the Charter of Rights - which guarantees "security of the person" - has added more confusion. Some activists think Section 7 should be interpreted to include "access to the necessities of life - food, shelter". But the government view depends on the audience.
At the U.N., Canada quotes court decisions that Section 7 should be interpreted to include an obligation to provide for basic needs. They change their tune in Canada. When welfare recipients go to court arguing that their Section 7 rights are being infringed, government lawyers oppose them, arguing that Section 7 implies no such thing.
Which is just another case of the double standard. Our governments hold fast to unpopular policies under the cover of international trade deals, arguing that "we have no alternative."
Meanwhile, on the world stage, Canada dons a saintly mask to sign international covenants on the worth of human beings, while opposing their implementation at home.
Shouldn't we get our own house in order, before we lecture the rest of the world on human rights?
Richard Shillington, Ph.D., is a statistician who specializes in the quantitative analysis of health, social and economic policy. He appears regularly before committees of the House of Commons and the Senate, and frequently provides commentaries for television, radio and newspapers on issues of taxation, human rights and social policy. Richard's Straight Goods column appears weekly.
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For more information about Human Rights treaties, see the website of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights www.unhchr.ch.
Other articles from Richard Shillington
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House Finance Committee gives more windfalls to wealthy; rotten apples to poor kids
Attn: Paul Martin - a REAL "children's budget", please
A poor measure of poverty
Are RRSPs really for you?
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