Winnipeg Free Press – Two-and-a-half million dollars down, another $36.5 million to go.

The Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights just received $2.5 million to help build the museum that’s under construction at The Forks.

CanWest – A gay rights group on Friday criticized Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s decision to shelve a retooling of the province’s sexual education curriculum.

Egale Canada’s executive director, Helen Kennedy, said McGuinty’s reversal on the policy, which would have introduced discussions on sexuality in Grade 3 and anal intercourse in Grade 7, was “very disappointing,” adding that “kids with same sex partners are being left out again.”

CNW – Harper Government Steps Up Attacks against Women’s Human Rights

In recent weeks, the following organizations have been denied funding by Status of Women Canada (SWC): the New Brunswick Coalition for Pay Equity, le Conseil d’intervention pour l’accès des femmes au travail (CIAFT), the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses, Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women (CRIAW), Réseau des tables régionales de groupes de femmes du Québec, the Centre for Equality Rights in Accommodation, Action travail des femmes.

Several other key organizations have been denied SWC funding in the last few years, such as the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, Womenspace, the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada, the Alberta Network of Immigration Women, Centre de documentation sur l’éducation des adultes et la condition feminine, Association féminine d’éducation et d’action sociale (AFEAS.)

AFP – An order banning a teenager from wearing his trousers too low has been dropped because it breached his human rights, a court was told.

Ellis Drummond, 18, faced an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) which included a ban on “wearing trousers so low beneath the waistline that members of the public are able to see his underwear”.

Xtra – As Xtra previously reported, Richard filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission in 2005. He alleges discrimination based on sexual orientation by his former employer, the Treasury Board of Canada.

Richard, the Canadian government, the CHRC and the Attorney General are entangled in legal proceedings over whether Richard’s allegations of systemic homophobia — which was filed two decades after the events in question — should still be heard in court.

Edmonton Journal – Dismayed and angry members of the transgendered community are preparing to launch a human rights complaint after the province delisted sex-change surgery from its funding coverage.

“It’s a matter of life and death,” said Jamie-Lynn Garvin, a 47-year-old who has been living as a woman for the last two years and was on a waiting list for a sex-change operation (although her funding hadn’t yet been approved).

ACC – Keep an open mind when determining which relationships are covered by family status protection. For example, the Ontario Human Rights Code defines family status as “the status of being in a parent and child relationship.” This definition however, has been liberally interpreted by both courts and tribunals to include most parent and child “type” relationships including non-biological parent and child relationships and non-biological gay and lesbian parents. The Ontario Human Rights Commission has also taken the position that family status protection extends to individuals providing eldercare to aging parents. Given the aging population, employers should prepare for family status accommodation requests from employees who are looking after older parents with special needs.

Health Zone – Aid experts alarmed by Canada’s new anti-abortion stand in foreign policy have received some raw political advice from a Conservative senator: “shut the f— up” or it could get worse.

“We’ve got five weeks or whatever left until G-8 starts. Shut the f— up on this issue,” Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth told a group of international-development advocates who gathered on Parliament Hill on Monday to sound the alarm about Canada’s hard-right stand against abortion in foreign aid.

Telegraph – “Banning corporal punishment is the model that the Council of Europe would like countries to follow. You can call it ’pressure’ if you like, but we are not about to shove anything down your throats. It is a matter of time and understanding, and we think that time will prove that we are on the right side of the debate on whether to ban corporal punishment of children.”

Ontario Superior Court Of Justice, May 3, 2010. Click to read full ruling.

Detroit Free Press – “The United States is correct that it need not wait until people are killed before it arrests conspirators,” U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts said in a 36-page decision. “But, the Defendants are also correct: their right to engage in hate-filled, venomous speech, is a right that deserves First Amendment protection.”

Toronto Sun – She is helping friend, Ray Nemard, 40, in his bid to obtain an apology from the commission after he was allegedly called a “f****** monkey,” by an operator at Coxwell subway station in 2004.

A complaint was filed to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which is hearing his case.

“I am not happy by what I heard today,” Nemard said after the meeting. “The operator who did this to me is still on the job even though we know he has 16 complaints against him.”

He takes “pills and other medication” to help him cope with the slur, which he said led to a loss of his job as a chef.

Toronto Star – Hate speech and the Canadian Human Rights Commission: B

Any restriction on speech has to have a clear social benefit, and so we recognize the Canadian Human Rights Commission for its decision in the Lemire case to deem the hate speech provision of the Canadian Human Rights Code to be unconstitutional.

vs.

Examiner – Don’t expect Commissioner Lynch to bring about change to way the system works, at least not in anyway that protects and respects the fundamental freedoms Canadians cherish such as free expression…

Asking Ms. Lynch this week about changing well documented problem behaviours in the CHRC, she tried to tell me that they are rated as one of the best places to work by civil servants and that they are continually improving.

“We are proud of how we accomplish our work,” says Lynch. I just wish the rest of us could say the same.

Vancouver Sun – The rules that allowed a Vancouver Catholic high school to sideline a lesbian teacher after her lifestyle became an issue have been in place for decades across the country and have been upheld by Canada’s highest court.

But labour and employment lawyers said Thursday it may be time for the Supreme Court of Canada to revisit the issue of how religious rights and freedoms can in some cases trump individual human rights.

National Post – “Iran wins a seat on UN Commission on the Status of Women.”

But this is no laughing matter. The country that sees women as second-class citizens and stones adulteresses to death has won a place by default on the world body’s commission charged with improving the lot of women around the world.

SteynOnline – The [Canadian Jewish Congress] says: “Mr. Steyn, however, rooted his assertions in quotations that Canadian Jewish Congress never uttered.  Maclean’s apologizes for this misattribution in its current issue.”

That’s not true, actually. Maclean’s issued not an “apology” but a clarification, “regretting any confusion”. As reflexively litigious as he is, Bernie Farber surely knows the difference – especially as there was an awful lot of back and forth between the various legal departments. My memory of the deliberations is that Bernie originally wanted Maclean’s to “apologize” for any “hurt” caused by such “defamatory” statements as “the only plausible explanation for the CJC is that it’s an Islamist front organization”. My reaction was that I’d personally fight such a case all the way to the Supreme Court because (a) it would be a non-stop laugh riot; and (b) Bernie’s peculiar touchiness on the subject suggests the odds are better than even that my joke would turn out to be true.

Globe and Mail – What issues are you going to be raising?

We’re thrilled the Canadian government has decided to focus on maternal and child health for the G8. But the fact is that they’ve been backsliding. This is a government that hasn’t taken gender equality and women’s rights issues very seriously in terms of our foreign aid. The Canadian government used to give a lot of funding directly to women’s organizations, but we’ve been shrinking that funding over the years.

Ennahar – Arguing for “progress in the defense of children’s rights”, [Anthony Lake] stressed that “peace and security” were essential. “Wars do not kill children, they bring disease and destroy the hopes of a better life,” he said.

Ottawa Citizen – What a difference a week makes. Just days after that final ruling, the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA), which oversees high school sports, was forced to stand down on the same issue. OFSAA was advised it was about to lose a challenge before the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal on its written policy denying girls the right to try out for boys’ teams if a girls’ team exists in the school.

Now, girls can play on a boys’ team in Ontario’s 860-plus high schools if they successfully try out. The switch is now sparking heated discussions about how to manage school sports everywhere.

Edmonton Journal – The Alberta government again appears to be making health-care decisions based not on true cost savings, but on what it thinks taxpayers will make the least noise about. How else to explain the continuing determination to end funding for sex-change operations?…

In the case of the relatively few Albertans seeking sex-reassignment surgery each year, they would be required to pay for a procedure that costs between $18,000 and $70,000 — an amount that can be financially devastating, to say nothing of the emotional and psychological devastation that would result from being unable to afford it.

Aljazeera – As Latin American governments have condemned a tough new anti-immigration law in the US state of Arizona, a leading human rights group has also launched a scathing attack against it.

“Arizona’s new immigration law violates an international anti-racism treaty that is binding on all government officials in the United States,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Friday.

vs.

AP – Drug traffickers, not soldiers, killed two children during a shootout in northern Mexico earlier this month, Mexican military officials said Friday.

Army investigators reviewed the evidence and found 5-year-old Martin Almanza Salazar and his 8-year-old brother, Bryan, were killed by shrapnel from a grenade that hit the back of their family car April 3, the chief armed forces prosecutor, Jose Luis Chavez, said.

The Province – The decision by Little Flower Academy, a private Catholic girls school in Vancouver, to sack music teacher Lisa Reimer after she revealed that she and her partner were about to have a child indicates, again, how confused and frankly uptight many people remain about sexual orientation.

Fox – Without fanfare, the United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged “immodest.”