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Submission of the OHRC to the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism ahead of her country visit to Canada

Resource Type
submission

March 2026

Summary

The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) has prepared a submission to inform the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance (the Special Rapporteur) to support preparation and priority setting for the official visit to Canada in the fall of 2026. 
 

About the OHRC 

The OHRC was established in 1961 as an arm’s-length agency of the provincial government. The OHRC’s mandate includes promoting and advancing human rights under the Ontario Human Rights Code (the Code) through research, policy development, public education, public inquiries, and legal interventions before tribunals and courts. The OHRC is one of three pillars of Ontario’s human rights system. The other two are the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) and the Human Rights Legal Support Centre (HRLSC).
 

This submission

The OHRC provides periodic input to government and to UN human rights mechanisms on issues relevant to its mandate. Country visits by UN independent experts aim to assess the situation of human rights throughout a given country. They are informed by meetings with various stakeholders during the visit itself (e.g., government officials, human rights institutions, community organizations, victims of human rights violations) as well as written submissions during the preparation phase of the visit. 

A country visit to Canada by the Special Rapporteur is scheduled for September 28 to October 9, 2026. The mandate of the Special Rapporteur directly aligns with the OHRC’s regular activities and priorities under the OHRC’s  extended Strategic Plan. It is in this context that this submission is made.

Acknowledging the key questions asked by the Special Rapporteur in the call for written input, the OHRC provides trend-level information in this submission and invites the Special Rapporteur to review the following three submissions the OHRC made to UN human rights mechanisms in 2025-26 as they are highly relevant to this country visit: 

  • Submission to the Special Rapporteur on intersectionality and racial discrimination in Ontario.
  • Submission to the UN International Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in Law Enforcement on anti-Black discrimination in Ontario’s criminal justice system.
  • Submission to the Human Rights Committee to inform the 7th periodic review of Canada under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
     

About the Code

In Ontario, the Code protects everyone’s right to equal treatment without discrimination in employment, housing, goods, services and facilities, contracts, and membership in unions, trade or occupational associations based on 17 protected characteristics known as Code grounds. The 17 Code grounds are: 

  • Age 
  • Ancestry 
  • Colour 
  • Race 
  • Citizenship 
  • Ethnic origin 
  • Place of origin 
  • Creed 
  • Disability 
  • Family status 
  • Marital status (including single status and same-sex partnerships) 
  • Gender identity
  • Gender expression 
  • Receipt of public assistance (in housing only) 
  • Record of offences (in employment only) 
  • Sex (including pregnancy and breastfeeding) 
  • Sexual orientation. 

The Code applies to everyone in Ontario, including all organizations which are regulated under Ontario’s laws, the provincial government, municipal governments, the broader public sector (such as hospitals and universities), and the private sector. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the Charter), as well as international human rights instruments, help inform how the Code ought to be interpreted and applied. 

The Code has primacy over other Ontario laws. This means that Ontario laws must follow the Code, unless specific exemptions are provided. When there is a conflict between the Code and another Ontario law, and an exemption is not specified, the Code prevails. 

The Code permits the development of special programs designed to help people who experience hardship, economic disadvantage, inequality, or discrimination for the purpose of promoting substantive equality (what is internationally referred to as special measures, such as programs to preferentially hire racialized staff, provide targeted scholarships to racialized students, or offer culturally-appropriate health services). The Code also permits religious, philanthropic, educational, fraternal or social institutions or organizations that primarily serve the interests of a particular Code group, known as special interest organizations, to restrict membership or participation to members of that group (e.g., a Black student association restricting membership to Black students).

Lastly, the Code permits special employment practices, allowing religious, philanthropic, educational, fraternal or social institutions or organizations to specifically hire employees based on Code-protected grounds if the institution or organization is focused on serving the interests of that group of people (e.g., an Indigenous community organizations hiring Indigenous staff). 
 

Racism and racial discrimination in Ontario

As introduced in the OHRC’s Policy and guidelines on racism and racial discrimination, the Code evolved in part from the Ontario Racial Discrimination Act of 1944. But, despite laws to address racial discrimination having existed for over 80 years, racism and racial discrimination persist in Ontario.

The HRLSC identified that 27% of its 2023-24 intake (i.e., calls received from the public to receive legal advice on a human rights matter) involved race and race-related grounds. HRTO Open Data for the same period shows that 28% of human rights complaints received (known as applications) cited race as one of the grounds for the complaint. This rate increased to 31% in 2024-25. 

Racism and racial discrimination take many forms in Ontario, including systemic anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism, hate and violence targeting various racialized groups, creed-based discrimination, and the distinct risks and harms experienced by racialized people faced with homelessness as well as with the rise of potentially biased artificial intelligence (AI) systems across sectors.

Trends observed by the OHRC through its work are outlined below. 
 

Anti-Indigenous racism 

Through more than a decade of work committed to advancing truth and reconciliation, the OHRC has engaged with First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and urban Indigenous partners in the context of both regular activities and thematic projects. As a result, the OHRC has worked to raise awareness of systemic anti-Indigenous racial discrimination inherited from colonialism in many areas and to provide practical human rights guidance to address this violation of human rights.

Among persistent concerns, the OHRC underlines that: 

  • Indigenous children and youth remain overrepresented in Ontario’s child welfare system.
  • Indigenous people remain overrepresented in correctional institutions, notably as a result of Canada’s colonial foundations, which means they are likely to be disproportionately exposed to conditions of incarceration that violate their human rights, such as: 
    • Strip searches without reasonable and probable grounds
    • Segregation (also known as solitary confinement)
    • Overcrowding
    • Inadequate physical and mental healthcare and addictions treatment
    • Inadequate access to programming or rehabilitation services.

  • Indigenous people face longstanding and widespread discrimination in Ontario’s healthcare system, with sometimes tragic consequences: in 2018, Joey Knapaysweet and Agnes Sutherland died after they traveled to Timmins (more than 400 kilometres away from Fort Albany First Nation) to seek health services that were unavailable in their community.

  • Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit and gender non-conforming people are uniquely vulnerable to gender-based discrimination and harassment, resulting in systemic violence linked to under-policing and to the gendered harms of discriminatory healthcare services (particularly as it relates to their sexual and reproductive health).

  • Indigenous people often experience racism, racial profiling, harassment, and lower-quality service once identified as Indigenous in different retail settings.

  • Indigenous people are underrepresented in many different areas of social life, including employment. Special programs and special employment practices are permitted in order to specifically hire Indigenous employees for the purposes of attempting to achieve substantive equality. At the same time, a growing number of cases of Indigenous identity fraud to exploit such measures have resulted in the need to protect the integrity of special programs or special employment practices and to prevent harm from false claims of Indigenous identity.

  • Indigenous people still face the intergenerational, traumatic legacy of genocidal colonial practices, which are in no way confined to history. For instance, in recent years, hundreds of suspected unmarked graves have been reported at the site of former residential schools across Canada and notably sparked waves of residential school denialism. 
  • Indigenous people are overrepresented among people experiencing homelessness and are more likely to be part of the “outdoor” or “unsheltered” populations, including homeless encampments. Indigenous people comprise approximately 5% of the Canadian population but represent more than 30% of unhoused individuals.
     

Anti-Black racism 

Anti-Black racism refers to the unique experiences of racism that Black people endure. It points to the prejudice, attitudes, beliefs, stereotyping, and discrimination that is directed at people of African descent and rooted in their unique history and experience of enslavement and its legacy. 

Anti-Black racism is deeply entrenched in Canadian institutions, policies, and practices, to the extent that it is either functionally normalized or rendered invisible to society at-large. This is particularly concerning in Ontario as the province is home to over half (52.4%) of Canada’s Black population. 

The OHRC has worked extensively to address anti-Black racism, particularly in the areas of criminal justice and education, and outlines that:

Creed and its intersection with racial discrimination

The Code does not define creed. Understandings of creed and what are considered creed-based beliefs and practices evolve over time, as do forms of discrimination based on creed. The OHRC sets out a series of characteristics in its Policy on preventing discrimination based on creed relevant when considering if a belief system is a creed under the Code. 

People’s experiences of discrimination based on creed often intersects with discrimination based on other Code grounds, particularly race and race-related grounds. 

Creed differences are “racialized” when they are associated, overtly or covertly, with constructed racial differences. Significant examples of contemporary forms of racialized creed-based intolerance in Ontario include: 

  • Antisemitism and Islamophobia.
  • Discrimination and harassment targeting members of faiths perceived to be or associated with Islam (e.g., Sikhism, Hinduism) due to Islamophobic prejudice. 
  • Anti-Indigenous racism expressed as creed-based discrimination through the dismissing, belittling, and stereotyping of Indigenous spirituality and the devaluation of related practices, particularly in healthcare. This type of intolerance directly finds its roots in colonial policies and legislation that sought to suppress and outlaw Indigenous spiritual practices with a view to assimilate Indigenous peoples. 
  • Caste-based discrimination.

In addition to direct discrimination and harassment, racialized creed-based discrimination may take subtler forms, such as denying accommodations (an obligation under the Code) in any social area, but particularly in employment, education, or healthcare.
 

Hate 

The Code does not specifically protect against or include hate or hate speech. Hatred and hate speech, which may violate Canada’s Criminal Code in the most extreme forms, are often rooted in anti-Black, anti-Asian and anti-Indigenous racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and white supremacy. In recent years, the rate of police-reported hate activities in Ontario against individuals and groups identified by their race, ethnicity, creed, gender, and sexual orientation (among other Code grounds) has nearly tripled – from 5.8 incidents per 100,000 population in 2019 to 15.6 per 100,000 in 2023, according to the Incident-based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey. A closer examination of this trend reveals that: 

  • A majority of police-reported hate crimes in Canada have consistently been motivated by race or ethnicity.
  • Among police-reported hate crimes motivated by race or ethnicity, the vast  majority targeted Black people.
  • Among police-reported hate crimes motivated by religion (the second most common motivation), the vast majority targeted Jewish people.

In 2023, Ontario recorded the second highest rate of police-reported hate crimes in Canada. Nonetheless, for the same year, nearly half of all police-reported hate crimes motivated by race or ethnicity and over 60% of those motivated by religion took place in Ontario.

The increase in rates of hate can have fatal consequences and is connected to systemic discrimination. It was also bolstered by the COVID-19 pandemic, during which hate, xenophobia, and extremism intensified, resulting in an increase in racist sentiments, racist behavior, and violence, particularly against East Asians, South Asians, and Indigenous peoples.
 

Racialized people experiencing homelessness 

As is true for Canada as a whole, Ontario is facing a housing crisis that is leading to profound and devastating impacts and which directly threatens the right to life, liberty and security of the person. Racialized people experience disproportionately higher levels of poverty, inadequate housing and homelessness. Racialized people experiencing homelessness face intersectional harms including heightened trauma, increased victimization, criminalization and systemic discrimination in accessing housing, healthcare and social services. 
 

AI as a catalyst to racial discrimination

AI systems have been widely adopted across sectors, including as tools directly available to the public via large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT. AI technologies such as facial recognition and predictive policing algorithms can perpetuate historic patterns of discrimination, particularly against racialized people, by incorporating the developers’ biases into the systems or relying on biased data.

The human rights risks associated with these technologies have significantly increased as their use has become ubiquitous throughout Canadian society and at a global scale. To address this risk, the OHRC released its Human Rights AI Impact Assessment in 2024 (in partnership with the Law Society of Ontario and with contributions by the Canadian Commission on Human Rights) as well as joint principles for the responsible use of AI with the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario in January 2026.
 

Recommended locations to visit

In response to the Special Rapporteur’s question on important locations to visit outside the capital region of Ottawa – and keeping in mind the logistical realities of a two-week, cross-Canada visit – the OHRC recommends the following locations for the province of Ontario: 

  • The city of Thunder Bay and/or Kenora, as regional hubs in northern Ontario where significant Indigenous populations live, work, and receive essential services (particularly health and education services unavailable on reserves).
     
  • The city of Sudbury, as the largest Francophone city in northern Ontario, with significant Indigenous and Black populations.
     
  • The city of Toronto, as Canada’s most populous and racially and culturally diverse city, Ontario’s capital, and the seat of numerous human rights advocacy and community organizations for both the province and Canada at large.