Most of the 318 complaints last year were workplace discrimination
FREDERICTON (CUP) — The New Brunswick Human Rights commission received 180 new complaints last fiscal year, according to its annual report released earlier this week.
That brings the total number of ongoing complaints in the province to 318, as of March 30, 2010.
More than half of those complaints, 57 per cent, stem from alleged discrimination in the workplace.
“That’s where a satiation is going to have financial implications for the person,” said commission chairman Randy Dickinson, who was appointed to the post in May.
Of the workplace complaints filed, 63 were lodged by people alleging they were discriminated against because of a physical disability.
Thirty-four alleged they were discriminated against because of mental disability; 17 were based on gender.
The Human Rights Act is a provincial law that enforces against discrimination and harassment in places of employment, housing, public services, publicity and certain associations, and prohibits discrimination on 13 grounds, including gender, race and age.
The report also found that 27 per cent of current complaints relate to physical disability.
Dickinson, who came to the commission after working the premier’s council on the status of disabled people, said many complaints carried over from last year because the process, if drawn out, can take several years to complete in some cases.
He said the average case takes 11 months to complete from the time the complaint is lodged, down from a one-year average waiting period in 2008-09.
“It depends on how complicated the case is as to how much investigating is required,” he said. “Tracking people down can take weeks or months.”
But, he added, most cases don’t even make it all the way through the process.
The commission provides an early mediation process that gives the complainant and respondent an opportunity to resolve the conflict before it advances to arduous and financially-burdensome stages.
Michael McGowan, a human rights professor at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, said human rights law and commissions are still relatively new functions in society.
New Brunswick, he said, was one of the first provinces to enact human rights law when it did so in 1967.
“It’s not until [people] have their rights trampled upon, usually in the work place, that they find out that there are human rights commissions,” he said.
“Commissions are an important office within a province that can give people a voice when sometimes they don’t know where to turn, and they can have their dignity protected.”
Dickinson said while human rights abuses aren’t as blatant in Canada as they might be in less democratic societies, we’ve still got a long way to go as a country.
“Issues like racism and homophobia may not be as in your face in some ways as other places, but we should not kid ourselves, these issues still happen to a lot of people on a daily basis.”
