Ethnicity and Human Rights in Canada

The second edition of Ethnicity and Human Rights in Canada has been extensively revised and updated, and new materials on legal protection for human rights in the post-Charter era have been added. The book examines key issues in the analysis of ethnicity and human rights in Canada. A typology of rights based on principles derived from international human rights instruments is employed as a conceptual framework for analysis. The analysis reveals the ways in which human rights violations, by way of discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity create and sustain the minority status of diverse racial and ethnic groups across Canada. Minority rights issues central to the concerns of Canada's three major ethnic constituencies are examined: aboriginal peoples-self-determination of aboriginal nations; racial and ethnic immigrant groups-anti-racism strategies and multiculturalism; Franco-Québécois-national sovereignty. In light of international human rights principles, the scope and strength of legal protections for human rights in Canada, at the level of human rights statutes and at the constitutional level (charter of Rights and Freedoms) is analyzed. The comparative strength of legal protection for the human rights of members of each of Canada's three ethnic constituencies is examined and evaluated.