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How to Design a Program for the Poor that is Not a Poor Program: Explaining the Political Sustainability of the Guaranteed Income Supplement
Get PDFCreated in 1967 as a temporary program aimed at supporting low-income people during the maturation of the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans, the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) has since become a permanent policy that remains a central component of Canada’s multi-layered public pension system. In this article, we explain why GIS is a popular and politically successful program that challenges the common wisdom in political science and policy analysis that “programs for the poor are poor programs.” The article shows that the success of GIS stems from its policy design (e.g., income-tested rather than means-tested benefits), the social construction of its target population (older people), and the vested interests that the program has created over time through self-reinforcing feedback effects with its constituencies. We show how the combination of these factors generated a strong consensus around GIS while not only legitimizing its survival but promoting its expansion over time. The article draws clear lessons about how we can learn from GIS to design more effective and politically sustainable social assistance programs for vulnerable populations, including people with disabilities in light of the debate over Bill C-22, the Canada Disability Benefit Act (CDBA)
The Canada Disability Benefit Act and Women with Disabilities: Pursuing Disability Equality and Reducing Administrative Violence
Get PDFStakeholders have welcomed the Canadian Disability Benefits Act as an opportunity to rectify the long-standing socioeconomic disadvantage experienced by persons with disabilities. This article examines one specific form of marginalization that lies beneath the surface of the discussions surrounding poverty and persons with disabilities in Canada: It considers women with disabilities and disabled women from intersecting backgrounds, who face unique experiences of poverty that need to be addressed by any legislation aiming to eradicate income barriers for the disability community. By drawing on the theoretical frameworks of bureaucratic disentitlement, administrative violence, and disability equality, this article examines the lived realities of women with disabilities to suggest ways that income support systems can be more responsively and ethically designed. Ultimately, the article advances suggestions for law reform and policymaking that aim to ameliorate income security processes for a diversity of women with disabilities while reducing the risk of administrative violence
From Rights to Justice: Perspectives on Access to Disability Justice in BritishColumbia (Attorney General) v. Council of Canadians with Disabilities
Get PDFRelying on the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in British Columbia (Attorney General) v. Council of Canadians with Disabilities as illustration, this paper aims to broaden perspectives about the availability of disability rights and disability justice. The first section considers the access to justice concerns that flow from the initial decision to deny standing to the Council of Canadians with Disabilities. Second, it addresses the barriers to accessing justice for persons with disabilities that grounded the case and the disproportionate impact of the impugned mental health legislation on equity-denied communities. The final section evaluates the persistence of procedural and substantive barriers to accessing disability justice. While we celebrate the Supreme Court’s decision, public interest standing alone is insuffıcient to address the deeply rooted barriers to disability justice. Instead, a comprehensive and collective approach is necessary to confront systemic barriers to justice, acknowledging intersecting forms of sanism
Speaking Like a Judge: Using Artificial Intelligence to Empirically Assess JudicialSpeech in Supreme Court of Canada Hearings by Language Spoken and Gender of the Speaker
Get PDFSo much is known about SCOTUS oral hearings, so little is known about SCC oral hearings. Why? The answer at least partly turns on the availability of evidence: Americans have ready access to transcripts of Supreme Court hearings and Canadians do not. This project addresses that challenge by introducing an artificial intelligence-based approach to transcribe the SCC’s 2021-2022 oral arguments, enabling detailed empirical analyses of some of the speaking patterns of justices. To demonstrate potential research avenues, it explores two questions: which judges speak the most and which of the two offıcial languages do they speak? The research here shows that there are major qualitative gendered differences: judges who are men speak much more in Court than judges who are women. Similarly, there is a significant language difference: judges not from Quebec rarely spoke French in oral hearings
Somethings Old, Somethings New and a Lot That’s Blue: Political Economic Reflections on Worker Subordination and the Law in Contemporary Capitalism
Get PDFDebates over worker subordination are central to discussions of the efficacy of protective labour and employment law whose central mission in a capitalist political economy, after all, is to reduce but not eliminate subordination. When protective labour and employment law seems to be fulfilling its mission discussions of worker subordination seem to ebb, but the topic becomes more urgent as the efficacy of the law declines. Not surprisingly, as labour law’s efficacy has been declining over the past several decades, we are in the midst of a revival of debates over worker subordination, the premise of this special issue. While many seek to revive the classic mission of labour and employment law, ameliorating the worst excesses of subordination, while leaving in place labour’s structural dependency on capital, the goal of this article is to revisit and elaborate a marxist political economy perspective to demonstrate that workers’ structural subordination to capital is deepening and that this limits the possibility of achieving much of the reformist agenda. While there are no easy ways of overcoming that structural subordination, a progressive reform agenda must centre that subordination and think about how labour laws might contribute to a transformative project
Tawdry or Honourable? Additional Payments to Representative Plaintiffs in Ontario and Beyond
Get PDFCertain class action practices have always fit uncomfortably within the traditional model of civil litigation, not least the payment of honoraria (“additional payments”) to representative plaintiffs. This subject has received little attention in Canada and elsewhere. However, recent decisions in Ontario and the United States have put a spotlight on this practice. These decisions raise crucial questions about the purpose of such payments and the purposes of class actions generally. This article considers the doctrinal and theoretical basis for additional payments, and whether they should be permitted at all. It then proposes a structure for the awarding of additional payments, based on the representative plaintiff’s time and expenses together with a trauma-informed approach. This article brings conceptual clarity to an overlooked area of class actions and provides practical guidance to judges and lawyers on whether and when additional payments should be made
Enforcing International Human Rights Law Against Corporations
Get PDFInternational human rights law is generally thought to apply directly to states, not to corporations since the latter is not a subject of international law. Some domestic courts are, however, enforcing these norms against corporations in domestic settings. Canadian courts have, for instance, recognized that corporations can be liable for breach of customary international law norms while UK courts have enforced international human rights norms indirectly against corporations relying on a combination of domestic corporate and tort law.
At the same time, some states are choosing to enforce international human rights norms against corporations using regulatory initiatives. These initiatives, known as due diligence initiatives, vary in scope, but generally prescribe obligations for corporations in the respect of human rights. These initiatives offer greater promise than court enforcement of international human rights norms as states are often able to ex ante legislate the issues with which courts enforcing international human rights norms are struggling.
Nevertheless, while due diligence initiatives offer greater promise than court enforcement of international human rights norms, they are far from a panacea. The initiatives often lack the necessary elements to make them a superior tool – that is, their scope, reach or enforcement possibilities may be limited – and they tend to focus on risks to business rather than risks to human rights, among other limitations.
Given the complexities in addressing corporate abuses, adopting a plurality of approaches to mitigate corporate abuse of human rights is likely necessary. Court enforcement and due diligence initiatives are but two approaches, the latter more promising than the first, but neither offers an antidote to the malignancy of corporate abuse. For that, there is a need for greater transformation of the economy such that corporate harms of human rights and the environment are no longer business as usual
Trade Law as Foreign Relations Law
No full textThis article reflects on the normal frame for international trade law in times of resurgent assertions of national interest in domestic politics and in foreign relations. An emphasis on national interest poses special problems when legal and economic relations are fundamentally transnational, necessarily involving multiple and complex connections across national borders and reflecting a diverse and complex pluralism within each national tradition. This is especially true in Canada, which is a society foundationally built on flows of people, goods, capital, and ideas from around the world as well as Indigenous and First Nations societies. A turn to foreign relations law, if made with a critical and transnational perspective, might offer a valuable new frame for trade law in challenging times
From Framework to the Field: How ‘Data Power’ in Agri-Food Systems Violates Human Rights
No full textThis article builds on the analytical framework I co-developed in “Power Contestations in the Use of Agri-food Data: Towards a Sustainability Governance Approach” by expanding its application and demonstrating its relevance to human rights concerns. Drawing on sectoral examples, the article examines five interrelated dimensions of power—agenda-setting, technology development and deployment, politics of knowledge and evidence, hegemonic alliances, and harvesting data and value—and shows how these dynamics produce structural inequities and violations of rights to food, participation, non-discrimination, privacy, and cultural integrity. While the human rights system has limitations, as most treaties predate the emergence of big data and lack specific provisions for addressing technology-related harms, it nevertheless offers a valuable normative and legal framework for accountability. By embedding human rights as a core accountability mechanism, the article refines the framework’s analytical value and enhances its accessibility for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers seeking to advance equity and accountability in agri-food governance
Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Justice: Recognition, Rights, and Representation of Indigenous Peoples in Bangladesh\u27s Environmental Regulatory Framework
No full textUsing an Environmental Justice theoretical lens, this thesis explores the extent to which the environmental legislative landscape of Bangladesh has ensured environmental justice for Indigenous peoples. In doing so, the thesis concentrates on three main areas: recognition, rights of Indigenous people under the environmental legal framework as well as their representation in the environmental decision making bodies. The research evaluates Bangladesh environmental laws against standards elaborated in the environmental justice literature on each of these three areas. The research employs a combination of legal and policy analysis, as well as a critical analytical approach as part of its methodology. This thesis contends that the environmental laws of Bangladesh fall short of realizing the rights, recognition and representation of Indigenous people in the environmental legal framework. These shortcomings appear to stem from a combination of factors including the design, scope, limitations and implementation of environmental laws and Constitutional provisions by both the state and the courts