Submission to the Committee on the Rights of the Child on the occasion of its consideration of Canada’s 5th-6th Periodic Reports

Submission to the Committee on the Rights of the Child on the occasion of its consideration of Canada’s 5th-6th Periodic Reports Canadian Human Rights Commission Submission to the Committee on the Rights of the Child on the occasion of its consideration of Canada’s 5th-6th Periodic Reports April 2022 © His Majesty the King in Right of Canada, as represented by the Canadian Human Rights Commission,. [...] The CHRC celebrates the 30th anniversary of Canada’s ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and takes this opportunity to both reflect on the progress of children’s rights in Canada and to highlight the important gaps and challenges that remain. [...] The Special Rapporteur also found that some families are afraid of reporting the disability status of a relative due to the risk of separation.19 In a series of ground-breaking decisions from January 2016 to the present, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (the Tribunal) found the federal program and funding for child and family services on reserve and in the Yukon to be discriminatory. [...] According to the Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls24 (Report), the crisis of child welfare, the chronic underfunding of essential services, and the many health disparities currently facing Indigenous children and their families can all be attributed to the legacy of colonialism and the intergenerational effects of trauma and genocide. [...] The social and economic issues that contribute to the overrepresentation of Black children in child welfare include poverty, the lack of adequate and appropriate services and supports, and the intergenerational effects of systemic racism.