CHRC funding has been unsustainably low and has deteriorated since 2006 due to lack of federal government support, which was foreshadowed in 1999 after a comment made by Stephen Harper.

CHRC funding has been unsustainably low and has deteriorated since 2006.  In 2001-2002, the CHRC budget was $21,726,000. A decade later, planned spending for 2010-2011 is only marginally higher, at $22,475,000. Adjusting for inflation, this represents a 20% drop. In March 2010, the CHRC announced that it was forced to close its offices in Toronto, Vancouver, and Halifax. Together, these three offices had received 70% of complaints to the CHRC in the year 2008.

At the same time, the CHRC’s legal mandate and areas of activity have grown. In 2008, its jurisdiction was extended, for the first time, to Aboriginal persons living on reserve, with a 3-year delay for complaints against First Nations’ governing authorities. 

A decade after 9/11, the CHRC has also waded into to the sensitive area of national security, publishing a research report that is critical of the lack of accountability of CSIS, the RCMP and other surveillance and control agencies. It also released its Special Report to Parliament that sets out Guidelines to assist federal government agencies to be accountable and transparent to Canadians when implementing national security measures and reporting on human rights in the national security context.

Human rights commissions in Canada have been subject to unprecedented attacks on their mandates, including by elected officials determined to roll back rights by repealing a key protection against virulent hate speech which is currently protected under Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.  Foreshadowing the current hostility to human rights commissions, Stephen Harper told Terry O’Neill of BC Report newsmagazine in 1999 that “Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society. It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this very scary stuff.”

Relevant Dates:

• 2001: CHRC released its Annual Report, with operating expenses at $21,726,000.
• June 2008: Bill C-21 gives First Nation Canadians the right - for the first time in Canadian history - to bring discrimination cases before the CHRC under the Indian Act.  However, no new funds were given to the the CHRC on a permanent basis to pay for this significant new responsibility.
• 2010-11: CHRC's planned expenses are $22,475,000. Adjusting for inflation, this represents a drop of 20% over 10 years.
• March 2011: CHRC announces plans to close its regional offices in Toronto, Vancouver, and Halifax.
• September 2011. A private member's bill is introduced by MP Brian Storseth (CPC-Westlock-St. Paul) to repeal Section 13 of the CHRA and eliminate hate speech protections.
• November 2011. CHRC publishes National Security and Human Rights which examines critically the government's record on human rights in the 'war against terror' and releases its Special Report to Parliament on Human Rights and National Security.