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June 30, 2010 The Honourable Steve Peters Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario Room 180 Legislative Building Queen’s Park Toronto, ON M7A 1A2 Dear Mr. Speaker: Under Section 31.6 (2) of the Ontario Human Rights Code, the Ontario Human Rights Commission is required to submit a report on the Commission’s activities for the previous fiscal period by June 30th of each year, to be tabled in the Legislature.

In today’s society, people are still denied housing because of the colour of their skin, or their country of origin, or their age, or many of the other grounds of Ontario’s Human Rights Code – the Code. Some people with mental health disabilities are evicted because of behaviour that is beyond their control, without landlords even attempting to accommodate them. Some housing providers don’t want to rent to seniors because they think they will need to pay money to accommodate them as they age or acquire disabilities.

The OHRC joined forces with the City of Toronto, the Federation of Rental-Housing Providers of Ontario, the Greater Toronto Apartment Association and the Human Rights Legal Support Centre to launch the “Housing is a human right” poster campaign. Large-format posters appeared on 120 transit shelters across Toronto during March, encouraging Toronto tenants and landlords to learn more about these rights.

Over the past two years, the OHRC has had many discussions with the City of Oshawa and other municipalities to express concerns about licensing and zoning by-laws that could have an adverse effect on student housing. The OHRC believes, and the Planning Act clearly states, that zoning should focus on planning and land-use issues, and should not be used to choose the people who will live in the housing.

In January 2010, the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB) ruled that municipalities have to consider the needs of everyone - including people with disabilities or on social assistance - when making bylaws. Two bylaws stopped new non-profit and supportive housing from being built in the Cedar Hill neighbourhood in downtown Kitchener. The Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario (ACTO) and other groups objected, and the OHRC intervened and made the argument that the OMB had to apply the Code when considering the case.

In late 2009, Chief Commissioner Barbara Hall appeared before the City of Toronto’s Planning and Growth Management Committee to share the OHRC’s comments on the city’s proposed new zoning by-law. This by-law is important because it is the first harmonized zoning by-law since the City of Toronto was amalgamated, and has the potential to either create housing or barriers for many vulnerable people across Toronto.

In a consultation over the summer of 2009, the OHRC heard that students continued to face problems arising from school discipline policies. Parents worried that the discipline their children received did not take into account the individual circumstances of each student, and the students who needed support the most were at risk of being left behind. That’s why the OHRC has worked hard to build on its partnerships in the education sector and to find new ways to bring a human rights focus to schools across Ontario.

Working with educators is key to our goal of an inclusive school system for all of Ontario’s children. It is equally important to educate students so they can protect their own human rights and those of their fellow students. To help meet this ongoing goal, Chief Commissioner Barbara Hall frequently talked to students across Ontario to share the human rights message and to learn first-hand of their experiences and issues. This work included visits to Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School in Thunder Bay and Holy Name Catholic High School in Windsor.

Education is just one of the many areas where the OHRC has built new partnerships in the past year. Also of note is the solid working relationship between the OHRC and the Human Rights Legal Support Centre (HRLSC). The OHRC is providing training to Legal Support Centre staff on OHRC policies, and the two groups regularly share information to identify and respond to emerging human rights issues. This collaboration is helping both organizations maximize resources and human rights benefits for all Ontarians.

It is hard to solve problems or run a successful business or make a good policy without all of the information. Yet this happens regularly when it comes to race, disability, sex, gender identity and other grounds covered by the Code. In many cases, information is not collected because of fear that doing so would itself be contravening the Code. That’s why the OHRC published a new guide called Count me in!, which dispels the myths and fears about collecting human rights-based data.

A person who is blind and uses a service dog wants to take a taxi, but the taxi driver’s religious beliefs lead him to not allow dogs in his car. A marriage commissioner refuses to perform a marriage ceremony for a same-sex couple, because it would be contrary to her religious beliefs. What do we do in cases like these, when rights related to one Code ground seem to conflict with those of another ground? The OHRC is doing some policy work to find answers.

OHRC policies are widely used by people responsible for applying the Code, such as lawyers, unions and human resource managers. They are useful because they respond to day-to-day human rights issues. They are also an important resource for individuals and their counsel seeking to enforce their rights under the Code. The OHRC applies its policies in all our work - education, outreach and partnership initiatives, public inquiries and legal interventions.

When incidents of racism or discrimination happen in communities, the entire community is harmed. To minimize this harm, it is important that any response be quick and close to the place where it happened. People bringing this harm tend to think twice when they hear from their local mayor, their local police officer or their next-door neighbour that this behaviour is not welcome and will not be tolerated.

The balance between human rights and public security is sometimes difficult to achieve. For many years the OHRC had an adversarial relationship with various police services in the province, dealing with complaints on a case-by-case basis. We found that we were not getting to systemic solutions, especially around racial profiling and other concerns about bias.

One in five people is likely to experience mental illness at some point in their life – and this does not include friends or relatives or co-workers who can also be affected. Despite this, mental illness is a “hidden” disability. In workplaces, housing or services, where the need to accommodate people with physical disabilities is understood, there is often reluctance or even refusal to accommodate people with mental health disabilities.

While developing a Mental Health Plan, we spent time in the past year building partnerships and adding our voice to key mental health issues and activities across Ontario. For example, we:

One of the OHRC’s key roles is to create or change systems to remove the potential for discrimination before it happens. A good way to do this is to see that laws are created or changed with human rights in mind. In the past year, the OHRC has advocated for changes in laws covering topics ranging from workplace safety to helping Ontarians to vote.

For the past year, the OHRC has been busy reviewing and commenting on areas where standards are being developed under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). Disability continues to be one of the most cited grounds in discrimination complaints so this will continue to be a priority. People continue to face issues like getting a ramp so they can enter their apartment building, or being put on the end of the list in hospital emergency rooms because they have a mental health issue.

In July 2009, the OHRC filed applications at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario against Hamilton, Sudbury and Thunder Bay transit providers, on behalf of transit riders with vision disabilities. We took this action because providers were not meeting their commitment to call out all stops for transit passengers. This meant that for people with visual disabilities, the simple act of taking a bus to work, to school or to meet friends instead became a barrier.

Over the past two years, hundreds of human rights complaints were made that the Special Diet Allowance for people on Ontario Works Assistance or the Ontario Disability Support Program was discriminatory because it excluded some disabilities and allowed not enough money for others. To deal with this large volume of cases, the Tribunal decided to hear three “lead” cases and to apply the lessons learned to the other cases.

The OHRC’s work on racism and racial profiling has been a driving force in its partnership with the Toronto Police Services Board on the Toronto Police Charter Project. The OHRC also intervened at the Tribunal in a complaint by Ron Phipps – a case which raised some tough issues. The Tribunal ruled Phipps had been subjected to racial profiling in 2005 by a Toronto police officer. The officer stopped Phipps when he was delivering mail in an affluent Toronto neighbourhood, checked with a homeowner Phipps spoke to, trailed him and checked his identity with a White letter carrier.

In 2009, the Superior Court of Ontario granted the OHRC’s request to intervene in a judicial review application of a woman who was ordered to remove her niqab when testifying at a preliminary hearing in a sexual assault case.

To meet the challenge of communicating with audiences across Ontario in a consistent, affordable way, the OHRC is creating new electronic tools for people to both learn about human rights and share what they have learned. The centre piece of this work is the OHRC website, www.ohrc.on.ca. The site offers a wealth of information on human rights in Ontario, includes regular updates on the work of the OHRC, and offers options for people to sign on as partners in advancing human rights.

Over the past year, the Chief Commissioner has travelled to many parts of Ontario and made presentations to a wide variety of audiences, such as:

The media plays a powerful role in educating and shaping the public’s perception on human rights issues. That is why over the past year, the OHRC served as a regular voice offering a human rights-based perspective. Guest editorials and letters to the editor covered topics such as: