Housing

While the OHRC is committed to supporting your office’s efforts to decrease poverty in Ontario, we are concerned that the government’s Poverty Reduction Strategy does not take an explicit human rights-based approach to poverty reduction and does not recognize the right to an adequate standard of living.

I hope this correspondence finds you well in these challenging times. I am writing on behalf the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC), to engage you on important human rights matters and our mutual interests related to your portfolio as Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) and Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) welcome the news that Facebook has now implemented and is enforcing several safeguards to prevent discriminatory targeting of advertisements for housing, employment and credit opportunities in Canada.

On National Housing Day, the OHRC calls on the Province to amend Ontario’s Building Code Regulation to require all units in new construction or major renovation of multi-unit residences to fully meet universal accessibility standards. The OHRC also calls on municipalities to prioritize universal design construction, consistent with their obligations under the Code. Government and housing providers must work together to make sure that new developments are fully inclusive, because Ontarians deserve no less.

This opinion editorial by Chief Commissioner Ena Chadha on housing as a human right appeared online at tvo.org on Monday, November 2, 2020.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) and the Human Resources Professionals Association recently held a webinar on a human rights approach to the COVID-19 pandemic. In employment and in delivering services, discrimination (including harassment) against any persons or communities related to COVID-19 is prohibited when it involves a ground under the Ontario Human Rights Code, such as race, age, citizenship, sex, etc.

Employers must recognize their human rights obligations and consider the potential disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on the vulnerable groups they employ or serve. In employment and in delivering services, discrimination (including harassment) against any persons or communities related to COVID-19 is prohibited when it involves a ground under the Ontario Human Rights Code, such as race, age, citizenship, sex, etc.

Given the vulnerability of tenants during the COVID-19 pandemic, the OHRC wants to remind the Greater Sudbury Landlord Association and the City of Greater Sudbury as a housing service manager and OW administrator, of their human rights obligations relating to rental housing.

Over the last two months, the OHRC has met with a range of stakeholders representing racialized communities, people experiencing poverty, people with disabilities, older people and other Code-protected groups. These groups are concerned that certain aspects in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic are having a negative impact on their human rights, and have raised four immediate concerns

I am writing today on behalf of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) about the government’s consultation on Ontario’s next Poverty Reduction Strategy (Strategy). The OHRC calls on Ontario to take a human rights-based approach to poverty reduction by entrenching the types of economic and social responses to COVID-19 into permanent solutions that will once and for all protect the well-being of everyone in our province.