Thank you to the subcommittee for beginning this important study.

I will focus my opening comments on how Canada's provinces and territories are effectively unaccountable for implementation of the UPR or their international human rights obligations, more broadly.

Here's a startling fact: All provinces and territories in Canada except one do not explicitly acknowledge the existence of their legal obligations under international human rights law.

As the subcommittee well knows, human rights obligations are binding on subnational governments in states with federal systems, yet as far as I can find, only Quebec is willing to publicly acknowledge this fact in its policy statements. Its international policy correctly states that, “As a party to these texts, Québec has a duty to enforce them within its borders and to report on compliance to the competent United Nations human rights bodies.”

Meanwhile, Alberta's government contends, wrongly, that is not required to participate in the UPR or otherwise respect international human rights law. In a footnote to the FPT protocol for follow-up to recommendations from international human rights bodies, Alberta states that it is, “not bound to report on international instruments/mechanisms to which it is not a Party.”

As you can see, Canada's governments do not even recognize their human rights obligations, let alone work together to effectively to implement them.

Implementing the UPR also requires provinces and territories to have strong internal processes, structures and mechanisms for human rights. Helpfully, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has studied countries around the world and documented several criteria for strong mechanisms. Here is how our provincial and territorial governments do against a few key criteria.

First, mechanisms should have a formal mandate and political ownership. Unfortunately, our provinces and territories do not publish information about their specific processes and structures, and there is no political ownership in the form of a minister with clear responsibility for human rights implementation.

Second, mechanisms should offer meaningful engagement with rights holders. Unfortunately, provinces and territories generally have no regular engagement processes of their own.

Third, mechanisms should demonstrate accountability for our country's human rights commitments. Alas, no province or territory in Canada publishes meaningful implementation plans responding to recommendations received from the UPR or other UN processes.

It is not hard to see why Canada received multiple UPR recommendations from other countries calling for improvements to our mechanisms for implementation.

Fourteen years ago, this subcommittee said Canadians should be able to “hold all orders of government accountable for their role in implementing Canada's international human rights obligations.” Today, this most basic expectation remains unmet.

I urge you to invite witnesses representing provincial and territorial governments to better understand just how opaque and ineffective human rights mechanisms are across the country. I also urge you to write a report examining progress on the subcommittee's 2010 recommendations, many of which remain unmet. Finally, I echo my fellow witnesses in calling on federal, provincial and territorial governments to develop and adopt a national framework for international human rights implementation.

As your predecessor said in 2010, failure to act in our own backyard is a threat to Canada's aspirations as a global human rights champion, and the world is noticing.