Resisting Rights: Canada and the International Bill of Rights,1947–76 by Jennifer Tunnicliffe

Reviewed by: Lucie Lamarche (lamarche.lucie@uqam.ca), Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada

Jennifer Tunnicliffe teaches history at McMaster University. She presents a book that debunks the myth of a Canadian official’s “dream team” being at the forefront of international human rights since the Second World War. This is not a new thesis, and the author herself acknowledges the relevance of previous work accomplished namely by William Schabas in 1998 (18). ² Also, she abundantly relies on historian Dominic Clément, whose work is along the same lines. ³ In fact, until almost the last minute before the vote at the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948, Canadian officials considered all options available to avoid embracing the ideal of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which, at the time, was clearly not seen by states as a binding instrument. This is even more troublesome. It is no surprise to read in Tunnicliffe’s book the reasons then summoned by Canadian officials in order to deny – sometimes openly – the relevance of a growing global movement in favour of all human rights: jurisdictional issues with provinces, sovereignty of the country, British tradition. Tunnicliffe also makes a point of underlying the fact that after the Second World War, the Canadian record was not so bright at home (56).

At a more conceptual level, Schabas and Tunnicliffe partly explain this resistance to a broader conception of human rights – as opposed to the narrow one of civil liberties – by an absence of rights culture, both among federal officials and, at the time, a small group of organisations such as the Canadian Civil Liberties Union and other civil liberties groups largely created on an ethnic basis in order to denounce discrimination against minorities, such as Japanese Canadians. One should not expect a theory of culture in organisations, as Tunnicliffe chose more simply to provide interesting and useful examples of such culture.

Tunnicliffe, though, in her book, pushes the envelope farther down the road of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in at least two ways. The first is by mining the complex, evolving, and intertwined relationship between the Canadian civil society and the federal government after the UN General Assembly’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Indeed, this adoption was followed by 20 years of harsh negotiations between states in order to turn the Declaration into one, and finally two, binding treaties (the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its Protocol, and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) adopted on 16 December 1966. In fact, Tunnicliffe’s thesis is that it was mainly the growing awareness of Canadian civil society that turned around the realpolitik of the Canadian government on the issue of universal human rights. From being suspicious and ferociously opposed to any written declaration of rights at the domestic and international level in the 1940s, to finally voting in favour of the two Covenants in 1966, the Canadian government was influenced not only by the need for a more positive international image, but also by a new and growing culture of human rights in Canada (114–118). This is what chapters 2 and 3 of the book are about.

The second way by which Tunnicliffe’s book provides added value to previous work about the commitment of Canada to universal human rights is by looking beyond the adoption of the UN Covenants in 1966. Entitled “Road to ratification,” chapter 4 of the book explores how competing forces at the domestic level (139) slowed down the signature (or ratification) by Canada of those basic treaties, which only happened in 1976.

Such competing forces are identified as the apathy of the federal government, the activity of social movements (145), and the struggle between federal and provincial jurisdictions, including Quebec. Tunnicliffe also rightly insists on the consolidation in the 1960s and 1970s of human rights institutions in Canada. At the international level, Canada had by then understood its interest in being proactive. In 1968, Canada sat on the committee for the first International Year for Human Rights and sponsored at home an impressive program aimed at promoting the universality and indivisibility of all human rights. That same year, the National Conference on Human Rights turned the table not only because of the wide participation from civil society but also because of its capacity to create space for dialogue on human rights among all jurisdictions. Consequently, a first campaign for ratification was orchestrated by a number of organisations in 1970. It is well-known that the support of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who wished to constitutionally entrench a bill of rights – but not of economic and social rights – nurtured such momentum. According to Tunnicliffe (175), provincial jurisdictions, and firstly Québec, were mostly concerned by the way the Canadian government would report to UN authorities about the domestic implementation of both Covenants. A deal was made, and ratification eventually came.

Reading this last chapter of the book makes us realise where certain contemporary domestic institutions whose mission is to liaise between the international and local authorities in the field of human rights are coming from. We are talking, of course, of the mysterious Federal-Provincial-Territorial Human Rights Committee, a by-product of the acknowledgment by Ottawa of provincial jurisdiction in the field of human rights. Also, any Canadian report submitted to a UN monitoring body since 1976 shows an almost static – but necessary – structure of such acknowledgment: a first chapter written by the federal authorities followed by a series of provincial and territorial ones.

Resisting Rights is a very accessible book and can easily be used in the classroom as introductory material to the complicated relationship between the Government of Canada, Canadian provinces, and human rights. The bibliography offered at the end of the book is rich and thorough. It is one thing to say that Canada is not always the nice guy with regards to human rights, but it is another to demonstrate it. Tunnicliffe succeeds at demonstrating her thesis. What the book does not do, however, is to theorise the idea of a culture of human rights in Canada. It simply reminds us that the federal government did not do it alone, often subscribing to the universal ideal of human rights against its deepest political feelings, and learning, as in the case of many other countries, to use the platform of human rights in international relations.