Are Human Rights the Rights of Social Justice?

We've been having an ongoing debate in class about the transformative potential of human rights.  On one level, documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms represent some universal values that almost anyone can endorse.  The Charter's protection of equality, fundamental freedoms, and life liberty and security of persons is certainly worth defending. The growth in human rights struggles is arguably grown out of three parallel movements: the civil rights revolutions that grew out of the 18th century revolutions (freedom of speech, religion etc), political rights revolutions that grew out of the 19th and early 20th century democratic revolutions, and the social rights demands that arose after World War II and arguably ended in the 1970s.

C.B. Macpherson argues in his powerful essay "The Problems of Human Rights in the Late Twentieth Century" that human rights, while certainly an object of transformation when tied to political struggle, are also limited by two opposing forces: the right to property and the primacy of individual rights. For Macpherson, human rights struggles are limited in liberal societies because they remove the individual from larger collective societies.  As liberal societies also value property over all other rights, there is a permanent struggle between civil, political and social rights and the economic structures that sustain the current economic system.  Given these tensions, Macpherson asks, can human rights be transformative?      

Miscarriage of Justice

There has been some debate about the legitimacy of Canada's system of "security certificates."  Under the security certificate program, the federal government can detain individuals without any formal charges.  In a current secret case before the Supreme Court of Canada, one man was detained for over three and a half years without formal charges.  There are many problems with this program, but the fact that the Supreme Court legitimizes the government's actions by holding this hearing in secret seems to be a serious miscarriage of justice. Is there any justification for a "security certificate" program?  

Supreme Court of Canada

Yesterday, the Prime Minister made his newest appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada.  By all accounts, the appointment of Marc Nadon is controversial. By not addressing the gender balance, Mr. Harper has signalled that he will not seek to make Canadian institutions more equitable by adequately reflecting the makeup of the population. The problem, of course, goes deeper than just the makeup of the judiciary.  By not appointing a more balanced court, it is impossible to imagine how structural inequality can be addressed through Canadian political institutions.  Moreover, as the Global and Mail suggested today, this appointment signals an ideological shift to the right. That observation seems to derive (according to the National Post) from Nadaon's dissent in the Omar Khadr repatriation case.  Is it legitimate for a government to appoint supreme court justices for ideological reasons?  What would a just appointment look like?

Work, Justice, and Time

There has been a lot of public discussion lately about work time in the public and private sectors. Today, the Conference Board of Canada released a report saying that sick time, mostly in the public sector, is a problem to the cost of $16.6 Billion per year.  The Canadian Tax Payers Federation has recently critiqued the sick days taken by public workers in Quebec and in Ottawa.  What is behind this assessment? On one level, there is a blatant ideological attack on unionized public sector workers suggesting that they are entitled and thus not hard workers.   But on another level is the assumption that the only value workers provide in the economy is when they labour in paid employment.  In essence, paid work time is the only value we place on these workers.

Yet, Jeff Noonan argues in his masterful new book, Materialist Ethics and Life Value, that the free realization of human life capacity is grounded in taking back control of workers' time.  In other words, in order to fulfill our capacities as human beings we need time to rest, time be healthy, and time to be free from exploitative and stressful relationships.  Here Noonan argues,

"Since human freedom is a form of activity, and all activity takes place in time, the full experience of time as free depends not only on the quantity of time available for our own appropriation but on how we experience the time in which we act. The full experience of time as free is not given in the experience of not having to do one thing rather than another but of being able to do in the present what we decide is most live-valuable, unconstrained by temporal pressures generated by the ruling value system over our activity (80)."

Noonan's point is not to ignore the importance of work to reproduce socially necessary goods or services (we all have to eat) but rather that we can only fulfill our full potential as human beings by creating socially necessary (and valuable) time.  Such an analysis is different than the assumptions made by the Conference Board and the CTF which simply reinforces the dominant value-system by quantifying workers based on money-value and the time they spend at work.  Having time to be healthy is essential to living full lives. The struggle for more free time seems like an essential struggle for a just and good society.            

Education and Justice

Education holds a special place in liberal democracies.  For liberal societies, education is promoted as a means to level the social playing field, allowing anyone to access the basic skills to compete in the economy.  While many of these assumptions are problematic (the ability to do well in school, for instance, depends on a host of social indicators), it is equally true that societies that educate their people are generally more equitable. Yet, in the current era, universities and schools are increasingly being placed under market-led restructuring.  Will these initiatives lead to greater access and more effective education or will it be a radical departure from Canada's traditional university model? What do these changes mean for a just and good society?

Justice, Truth, and Reconcilation

Yesterday, the social justice and the common good class heard eye opening stories about poverty and injustice in Saskatchewan.  As our discussion progressed, there was discussion of the horrifying legacy of the residential school system.  We all agreed that more education is needed in order for Aboriginal survivors to find peace and for non-Aboriginal Canadians to confront this horrid colonial legacy. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is certainly a good place to being addressing this history.  How can the commission create the conditions for a just settlement?  What more can (and should) be done for a more just future?

Charter of Quebec Values Part II

Not much to add from the previous post, but a fascinating debate in the Globe and Mail today about the Charter. A 9 person legal panel says 9-0 that the Quebec Charter violates the Canadian Charter.  Read through the arguments here.  There is also an excellent critique by Darryl Leroux on English Canada's reaction to the Quebec Charter of Values here, arguing that it is embedded within deeper conceptions of empire, colonialism, race and racism in North America.