Strengthening Human Rights WHY BRITISH COLUMBIA NEEDS Gwen Brodsky A HUMAN RIGHTS and Shelagh Day COMMISSION DECEMBER 2014 the POVERTY and HUMAN RIGHTS CENTRE About the Authors Brodsky and Day are nationally and internationally recognized experts on human rights law and human rights accountability mechanisms, and co-directors of the Poverty and Human Rights Centre in Vancouver. [...] WHY BRITISH COLUMBIA NEEDS A HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the support of the Law Foundation of British Columbia, the Canadian Human Rights Reporter, and the Community University Research Alliance Programme of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. [...] The major cases that are Rights Tribunal considered the pillars of human rights law were mounted and alone, and no argued by human rights commissions.10 commission, the In British Columbia, with the BC Human Rights Tribunal alone character of human and no commission, the character of human rights protection has rights legislation changed dramatically. [...] The powers All of the Code’s purposes are important to the protection of the necessary to fulfill human rights of British Columbians and to the building of a these purposes do human rights culture. [...] WHY BRITISH COLUMBIA NEEDS A HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION functions for the Ontario Human Rights Commission in this way: The functions of the Commission are to promote and advance respect for human rights in Ontario, to protect human rights in Ontario and, recognizing that it is in the public interest to do so and that it is the Commission’s duty to protect the public interest, to identify and promote